Our Dear Brother
A touch on the lawyer’s wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room,
irresolute, makes him start and say, “What’s that?”
“It’s me,” returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his
ear. “Can’t you wake him?”
“No.”
“What have you done with your candle?”
“It’s gone out. Here it is.”
Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and
tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his
endeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his
lodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from
the shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason
that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs
outside.
The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up
with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. “Does the man
generally sleep like this?” inquired the lawyer in a low voice. “Hi!
I don’t know,” says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows.
“I know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself
very close.”
Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the
great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes
upon the bed.
“God save us!” exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. “He is dead!” Krook drops
the heavy hand he has taken up so suddenly that the arm swings over
the bedside.
They look at one another for a moment.
“Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here’s
poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?” says Krook, with
his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire’s wings.
Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls, “Miss Flite! Flite!
Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!” Krook follows him with his
eyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old
portmanteau and steal back again.
“Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!” So Mr. Krook addresses a
crazy little woman who is his female lodger, who appears and vanishes
in a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy medical man
brought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a broad
Scotch tongue.
“Ey! Bless the hearts o’ ye,” says the medical man, looking up at
them after a moment’s examination. “He’s just as dead as Phairy!”
Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has
been dead any time.
“Any time, sir?” says the medical gentleman. “It’s probable he wull
have been dead aboot three hours.”
“About that time, I should say,” observes a dark young man on the
other side of the bed.
“Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?” inquires the
first.
The dark young man says yes.
“Then I’ll just tak’ my depairture,” replies the other, “for I’m nae
gude here!” With which remark he finishes his brief attendance and
returns to finish his dinner.
The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face
and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his
pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.
“I knew this person by sight very well,” says he. “He has purchased
opium of me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related
to him?” glancing round upon the three bystanders.
“I was his landlord,” grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from
the surgeon’s outstretched hand. “He told me once I was the nearest
relation he had.”
“He has died,” says the surgeon, “of an over-dose of opium, there is
no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough
here now,” taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Krook, “to kill a dozen
people.”
“Do you think he did it on purpose?” asks Krook.
“Took the over-dose?”
“Yes!” Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible
interest.
“I can’t say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit
of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?”
“I suppose he was. His room—don’t look rich,” says Krook, who might
have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around.
“But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to
name his circumstances to me.”
“Did he owe you any rent?”
“Six weeks.”
“He will never pay it!” says the young man, resuming his examination.
“It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to
judge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy
release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare
say, good-looking.” He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on
the bedstead’s edge with his face towards that other face and his
hand upon the region of the heart. “I recollect once thinking there
was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall
in life. Was that so?” he continues, looking round.
Krook replies, “You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose
heads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my
lodger for a year and a half and lived—or didn’t live—by
law-writing, I know no more of him.”
During this dialogue Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old
portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all
appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the
bed—from the young surgeon’s professional interest in death,
noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as
an individual; from the old man’s unction; and the little crazy
woman’s awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his
rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this
while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention
nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might
the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case,
as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.
He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved,
professional way.
“I looked in here,” he observes, “just before you, with the
intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some
employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my
stationer—Snagsby of Cook’s Court. Since no one here knows anything
about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!” to the
little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has
often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the
law-stationer. “Suppose you do!”
While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation
and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and
he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, but
stands, ever, near the old portmanteau.
Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves.
“Dear me, dear me,” he says; “and it has come to this, has it! Bless
my soul!”
“Can you give the person of the house any information about this
unfortunate creature, Snagsby?” inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. “He was in
arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know.”
“Well, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind
his hand, “I really don’t know what advice I could offer, except
sending for the beadle.”
“I don’t speak of advice,” returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. “I could
advise—”
“No one better, sir, I am sure,” says Mr. Snagsby, with his
deferential cough.
“I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he
came from, or to anything concerning him.”
“I assure you, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply with
his cough of general propitiation, “that I no more know where he came
from than I know—”
“Where he has gone to, perhaps,” suggests the surgeon to help him
out.
A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook,
with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.
“As to his connexions, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, “if a person was to
say to me, ‘Snagsby, here’s twenty thousand pound down, ready for you
in the Bank of England if you’ll only name one of ’em,’ I couldn’t do
it, sir! About a year and a half ago—to the best of my belief, at
the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle
shop—”
“That was the time!” says Krook with a nod.
“About a year and a half ago,” says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, “he
came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my
little woman (which I name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation)
in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to
understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to
put too fine a point upon it,” a favourite apology for plain speaking
with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative
frankness, “hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to
strangers, particular—not to put too fine a point upon it—when they
want anything. But she was rather took by something about this
person, whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want
of attention, or by what other ladies’ reasons, I leave you to judge;
and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My
little woman hasn’t a good ear for names,” proceeds Mr. Snagsby after
consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, “and she
considered Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which,
she got into a habit of saying to me at meals, ‘Mr. Snagsby, you
haven’t found Nimrod any work yet!’ or ‘Mr. Snagsby, why didn’t you
give that eight and thirty Chancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?’ or
such like. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our
place; and that is the most I know of him except that he was a quick
hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him
out, say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have
it brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which—” Mr. Snagsby
concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much
as to add, “I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he
were in a condition to do it.”
“Hadn’t you better see,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, “whether he
had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest, and
you will be asked the question. You can read?”
“No, I can’t,” returns the old man with a sudden grin.
“Snagsby,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “look over the room for him. He will
get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here, I’ll wait
if you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should
ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the
candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he’ll soon see whether there is
anything to help you.”
“In the first place, here’s an old portmanteau, sir,” says Snagsby.
Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have
seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though
there is very little else, heaven knows.
The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer
conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the
chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door.
The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches
tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his
long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied
in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same
place and attitude.
There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau;
there is a bundle of pawnbrokers’ duplicates, those turnpike tickets
on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium,
on which are scrawled rough memoranda—as, took, such a day, so many
grains; took, such another day, so many more—begun some time ago, as
if with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left
off. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to
coroners’ inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard
and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an
old letter or of any other writing in either. The young surgeon
examines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence
are all he finds. Mr. Snagsby’s suggestion is the practical
suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.
So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out
of the room. “Don’t leave the cat there!” says the surgeon; “that
won’t do!” Mr. Krook therefore drives her out before him, and she
goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her
lips.
“Good night!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and
meditation.
By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its
inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the
army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr.
Krook’s window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already
walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he
stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base
occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall
back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms
with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in
young Perkins’ having “fetched” young Piper “a crack,” renews her
friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the
corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge
of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges
confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance
of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable
in station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and
bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what’s
the matter. The general feeling seems to be that it’s a blessing Mr.
Krook warn’t made away with first, mingled with a little natural
disappointment that he was not. In the midst of this sensation, the
beadle arrives.
The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a
ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the
moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The
policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the
barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that
must be borne with until government shall abolish him. The sensation
is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the
beadle is on the ground and has gone in.
By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation,
which has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be
in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the
coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is
immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing
whatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that
Mrs. Green’s son “was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better
than anybody,” which son of Mrs. Green’s appears, on inquiry, to be
at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months
out, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the
Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours,
examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by
exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public.
Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and
undergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with
having boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a popular song to that
effect and importing that the boy was made into soup for the
workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law
and seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on
condition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it—a
condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the
time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or
less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible
great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues
his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white
gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a
street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost
child and a murder.
Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting
about Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror’s name
is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle’s own
name, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served
and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr. Krook’s to keep
a small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently
arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in
the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which
earthly lodgings take for No one—and for Every one.
And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau;
and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through
five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that
any one can trace than a deserted infant.
Next day the court is all alive—is like a fair, as Mrs. Perkins,
more than reconciled to Mrs. Piper, says in amicable conversation
with that excellent woman. The coroner is to sit in the first-floor
room at the Sol’s Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice
a week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional
celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes
(according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally
round him and support first-rate talent. The Sol’s Arms does a brisk
stroke of business all the morning. Even children so require
sustaining under the general excitement that a pieman who has
established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court says
his brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hovering
between the door of Mr. Krook’s establishment and the door of the
Sol’s Arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet
spirits and accepts the compliment of a glass of ale or so in return.
At the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for whom the jurymen are
waiting and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good
dry skittle-ground attached to the Sol’s Arms. The coroner frequents
more public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer,
tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death
in its most awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the
landlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the
piano and takes a Windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of
several short tables put together and ornamented with glutinous rings
in endless involutions, made by pots and glasses. As many of the jury
as can crowd together at the table sit there. The rest get among the
spittoons and pipes or lean against the piano. Over the coroner’s
head is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a bell, which
rather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of going to be
hanged presently.
Call over and swear the jury! While the ceremony is in progress,
sensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a
large shirt-collar, with a moist eye and an inflamed nose, who
modestly takes a position near the door as one of the general public,
but seems familiar with the room too. A whisper circulates that this
is Little Swills. It is considered not unlikely that he will get up
an imitation of the coroner and make it the principal feature of the
Harmonic Meeting in the evening.
“Well, gentlemen—” the coroner begins.
“Silence there, will you!” says the beadle. Not to the coroner,
though it might appear so.
“Well, gentlemen,” resumes the coroner. “You are impanelled here to
inquire into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given
before you as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will
give your verdict according to the—skittles; they must be stopped,
you know, beadle!—evidence, and not according to anything else. The
first thing to be done is to view the body.”
“Make way there!” cries the beadle.
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.
Oh! 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 to-day,
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 heerd 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 to-day.” 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 piano-forte 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 silent, 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! Oh, 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 passerby, “Look here!”
With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court 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!”