An Appeal Case

As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have
given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr.
Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise
when he received the representation, though it caused him much
uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted
together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole
days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge, and
laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While they were
thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent considerable
inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed his head so
constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right
place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other time, but
maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our utmost
endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping assurances
that everything was going on capitally and that it really was all
right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him.

We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was
made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard's behalf as an infant and a
ward, and I don't know what, and that there was a quantity of
talking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court as
a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was adjourned
and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and petitioned about
until Richard began to doubt (as he told us) whether, if he entered
the army at all, it would not be as a veteran of seventy or eighty
years of age. At last an appointment was made for him to see the Lord
Chancellor again in his private room, and there the Lord Chancellor
very seriously reproved him for trifling with time and not knowing
his mind--"a pretty good joke, I think," said Richard, "from that
quarter!"--and at last it was settled that his application should be
granted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for
an ensign's commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an
agent's; and Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a
violent course of military study and got up at five o'clock every
morning to practise the broadsword exercise.

Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We
sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper or out
of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken
to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now in a
professor's house in London, was able to be with us less frequently
than before; my guardian still maintained the same reserve; and so
time passed until the commission was obtained and Richard received
directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland.

He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a
long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed before
my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting
and said, "Come in, my dears!" We went in and found Richard, whom we
had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece looking
mortified and angry.

"Rick and I, Ada," said Mr. Jarndyce, "are not quite of one mind.
Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!"

"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "The harder because
you have been so considerate to me in all other respects and have
done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never could have
been set right without you, sir."

"Well, well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "I want to set you more right yet. I
want to set you more right with yourself."

"I hope you will excuse my saying, sir," returned Richard in a fiery
way, but yet respectfully, "that I think I am the best judge about
myself."

"I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick," observed Mr.
Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, "that it's
quite natural in you to think so, but I don't think so. I must do my
duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; and I hope
you will always care for me, cool and hot."

Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-chair
and sat beside her.

"It's nothing, my dear," he said, "it's nothing. Rick and I have only
had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are
the theme. Now you are afraid of what's coming."

"I am not indeed, cousin John," replied Ada with a smile, "if it is
to come from you."

"Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute's calm attention,
without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My dear
girl," putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the
easy-chair, "you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little
woman told me of a little love affair?"

"It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your
kindness that day, cousin John."

"I can never forget it," said Richard.

"And I can never forget it," said Ada.

"So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for us
to agree," returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the
gentleness and honour of his heart. "Ada, my bird, you should know
that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All that
he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He
has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward to the tree he
has planted."

"Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am
quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir," said
Richard, "is not all I have."

"Rick, Rick!" cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner,
and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have
stopped his ears. "For the love of God, don't found a hope or
expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the
grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom
that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg,
better to die!"

We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit his
lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and knew
that I felt too, how much he needed it.

"Ada, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness,
"these are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and have
seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had to start him in
the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you, for his
sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the
understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I must
go further. I will be plain with you both. You were to confide freely
in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you wholly to
relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship."

"Better to say at once, sir," returned Richard, "that you renounce
all confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same."

"Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don't mean it."

"You think I have begun ill, sir," retorted Richard. "I HAVE, I
know."

"How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we spoke
of these things last," said Mr. Jarndyce in a cordial and encouraging
manner. "You have not made that beginning yet, but there is a time
for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather, it is just now
fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You two (very young,
my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing more. What more may
come must come of being worked out, Rick, and no sooner."

"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "Harder than I could
have supposed you would be."

"My dear boy," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am harder with myself when I do
anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own hands.
Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that there
should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for
her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what
is best for the other, if not what is best for yourselves."

"Why is it best, sir?" returned Richard hastily. "It was not when we
opened our hearts to you. You did not say so then."

"I have had experience since. I don't blame you, Rick, but I have had
experience since."

"You mean of me, sir."

"Well! Yes, of both of you," said Mr. Jarndyce kindly. "The time is
not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not right,
and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins, begin
afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to
write your lives in."

Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing.

"I have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Esther," said
Mr. Jarndyce, "until now, in order that we might be open as the day,
and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I now most
earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here. Leave all else
to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do
wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in ever bringing you
together."

A long silence succeeded.

"Cousin Richard," said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to
his face, "after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice is
left us. Your mind may be quite at ease about me, for you will leave
me here under his care and will be sure that I can have nothing to
wish for--quite sure if I guide myself by his advice. I--I don't
doubt, cousin Richard," said Ada, a little confused, "that you are
very fond of me, and I--I don't think you will fall in love with
anybody else. But I should like you to consider well about it too, as
I should like you to be in all things very happy. You may trust in
me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable; but I am not
unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cousins may be sorry
to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Richard, though I know
it's for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately,
and often talk of you with Esther, and--and perhaps you will
sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard. So now," said Ada,
going up to him and giving him her trembling hand, "we are only
cousins again, Richard--for the time perhaps--and I pray for a
blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!"

It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my
guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he
himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But it
was certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from this
hour he never was as free and open with Mr. Jarndyce as he had been
before. He had every reason given him to be so, but he was not; and
solely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between them.

In the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself,
and even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in Hertfordshire
while he, Mr. Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a week. He
remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at
such times would confide to me the heaviest self-reproaches. But in a
few minutes he would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by
which they were both to be made rich and happy for ever, and would
become as gay as possible.

It was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long, buying
a variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the things he would
have bought if he had been left to his own ways I say nothing. He was
perfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and
feelingly about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so
much upon the encouragement he derived from these conversations that
I could never have been tired if I had tried.

There used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our lodging
to fence with Richard a person who had formerly been a cavalry
soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing,
with whom Richard had practised for some months. I heard so much
about him, not only from Richard, but from my guardian too, that I
was purposely in the room with my work one morning after breakfast
when he came.

"Good morning, Mr. George," said my guardian, who happened to be
alone with me. "Mr. Carstone will be here directly. Meanwhile, Miss
Summerson is very happy to see you, I know. Sit down."

He sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought, and
without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and across
his upper lip.

"You are as punctual as the sun," said Mr. Jarndyce.

"Military time, sir," he replied. "Force of habit. A mere habit in
me, sir. I am not at all business-like."

"Yet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?" said Mr.
Jarndyce.

"Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much of a
one."

"And what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make of
Mr. Carstone?" said my guardian.

"Pretty good, sir," he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest
and looking very large. "If Mr. Carstone was to give his full mind to
it, he would come out very good."

"But he don't, I suppose?" said my guardian.

"He did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind. Perhaps
he has something else upon it--some young lady, perhaps." His bright
dark eyes glanced at me for the first time.

"He has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr. George," said I,
laughing, "though you seem to suspect me."

He reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper's bow.
"No offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs."

"Not at all," said I. "I take it as a compliment."

If he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or
four quick successive glances. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said to
my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, "but you did me the
honour to mention the young lady's name--"

"Miss Summerson."

"Miss Summerson," he repeated, and looked at me again.

"Do you know the name?" I asked.

"No, miss. To my knowledge I never heard it. I thought I had seen you
somewhere."

"I think not," I returned, raising my head from my work to look at
him; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner that
I was glad of the opportunity. "I remember faces very well."

"So do I, miss!" he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of
his dark eyes and broad forehead. "Humph! What set me off, now, upon
that!"

His once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by
his efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his
relief.

"Have you many pupils, Mr. George?"

"They vary in their number, sir. Mostly they're but a small lot to
live by."

"And what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?"

"All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to
'prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and show
themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of
course, but THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open."

"People don't come with grudges and schemes of finishing their
practice with live targets, I hope?" said my guardian, smiling.

"Not much of that, sir, though that HAS happened. Mostly they come
for skill--or idleness. Six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. I
beg your pardon," said Mr. George, sitting stiffly upright and
squaring an elbow on each knee, "but I believe you're a Chancery
suitor, if I have heard correct?"

"I am sorry to say I am."

"I have had one of YOUR compatriots in my time, sir."

"A Chancery suitor?" returned my guardian. "How was that?"

"Why, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being
knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post," said Mr.
George, "that he got out of sorts. I don't believe he had any idea of
taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and
violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away
till he was red hot. One day I said to him when there was nobody by
and he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, 'If this
practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don't
altogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of
mind; I'd rather you took to something else.' I was on my guard for a
blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part
and left off directly. We shook hands and struck up a sort of
friendship."

"What was that man?" asked my guardian in a new tone of interest.

"Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer before they made a
baited bull of him," said Mr. George.

"Was his name Gridley?"

"It was, sir."

Mr. George directed another succession of quick bright glances at me
as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the
coincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name.
He made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he
called my condescension.

"I don't know," he said as he looked at me, "what it is that sets me
off again--but--bosh! What's my head running against!" He passed one
of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to sweep the broken
thoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward, with one arm
akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at
the ground.

"I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Gridley
into new troubles and that he is in hiding," said my guardian.

"So I am told, sir," returned Mr. George, still musing and looking on
the ground. "So I am told."

"You don't know where?"

"No, sir," returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out
of his reverie. "I can't say anything about him. He will be worn out
soon, I expect. You may file a strong man's heart away for a good
many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last."

Richard's entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. George rose, made me
another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and
strode heavily out of the room.

This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard's departure. We
had no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing
early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when
he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being
again expected to come on that day, Richard proposed to me that we
should go down to the court and hear what passed. As it was his last
day, and he was eager to go, and I had never been there, I gave my
consent and we walked down to Westminster, where the court was then
sitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements concerning the letters
that Richard was to write to me and the letters that I was to write
to him and with a great many hopeful projects. My guardian knew where
we were going and therefore was not with us.

When we came to the court, there was the Lord Chancellor--the same
whom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln's Inn--sitting in
great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a
red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little
garden, which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was a
long row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at
their feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and
gowns--some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody paying
much attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor leaned back in
his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and his
forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present dozed;
some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups:
all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very
unconcerned, and extremely comfortable.

To see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the roughness
of the suitors' lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and
ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it
represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was
raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to
day, and year to year, in such good order and composure; to behold
the Lord Chancellor and the whole array of practitioners under him
looking at one another and at the spectators as if nobody had ever
heard that all over England the name in which they were assembled was
a bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contempt, and
indignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little
short of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one--this
was so curious and self-contradictory to me, who had no experience of
it, that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I
sat where Richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me;
but there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor
little Miss Flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at
it.

Miss Flite soon espied us and came to where we sat. She gave me a
gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much gratification
and pride, its principal attractions. Mr. Kenge also came to speak to
us and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the
bland modesty of a proprietor. It was not a very good day for a
visit, he said; he would have preferred the first day of term; but it
was imposing, it was imposing.

When we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress--if I
may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion--seemed to die out
of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to
come, to any result. The Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of
papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody said,
"Jarndyce and Jarndyce." Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and
a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great
heaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of papers.

I think it came on "for further directions"--about some bill of
costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough.
But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were "in
it," and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I.
They chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and
explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way,
and some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely
proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more
buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle
entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. After an
hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut
short, it was "referred back for the present," as Mr. Kenge said, and
the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished
bringing them in.

I glanced at Richard on the termination of these hopeless proceedings
and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome young face. "It
can't last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!" was all he
said.

I had seen Mr. Guppy bringing in papers and arranging them for Mr.
Kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered
me desirous to get out of the court. Richard had given me his arm and
was taking me away when Mr. Guppy came up.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Carstone," said he in a whisper, "and Miss
Summerson's also, but there's a lady here, a friend of mine, who
knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands." As he
spoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from
my remembrance, Mrs. Rachael of my godmother's house.

"How do you do, Esther?" said she. "Do you recollect me?"

I gave her my hand and told her yes and that she was very little
altered.

"I wonder you remember those times, Esther," she returned with her
old asperity. "They are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you, and
glad you are not too proud to know me." But indeed she seemed
disappointed that I was not.

"Proud, Mrs. Rachael!" I remonstrated.

"I am married, Esther," she returned, coldly correcting me, "and am
Mrs. Chadband. Well! I wish you good day, and I hope you'll do well."

Mr. Guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a
sigh in my ear and elbowed his own and Mrs. Rachael's way through the
confused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which we
were in the midst of and which the change in the business had brought
together. Richard and I were making our way through it, and I was yet
in the first chill of the late unexpected recognition when I saw,
coming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person than Mr.
George. He made nothing of the people about him as he tramped on,
staring over their heads into the body of the court.

"George!" said Richard as I called his attention to him.

"You are well met, sir," he returned. "And you, miss. Could you point
a person out for me, I want? I don't understand these places."

Turning as he spoke and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we
were out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain.

"There's a little cracked old woman," he began, "that--"

I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by me, having kept
beside me all the time and having called the attention of several of
her legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion) by
whispering in their ears, "Hush! Fitz Jarndyce on my left!"

"Hem!" said Mr. George. "You remember, miss, that we passed some
conversation on a certain man this morning? Gridley," in a low
whisper behind his hand.

"Yes," said I.

"He is hiding at my place. I couldn't mention it. Hadn't his
authority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her.
He says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost as
good as a friend to him here. I came down to look for her, for when I
sat by Gridley this afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the
muffled drums."

"Shall I tell her?" said I.

"Would you be so good?" he returned with a glance of something like
apprehension at Miss Flite. "It's a providence I met you, miss; I
doubt if I should have known how to get on with that lady." And he
put one hand in his breast and stood upright in a martial attitude as
I informed little Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purport of his kind
errand.

"My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!"
she exclaimed. "Now really! My dear, I will wait upon him with the
greatest pleasure."

"He is living concealed at Mr. George's," said I. "Hush! This is Mr.
George."

"In--deed!" returned Miss Flite. "Very proud to have the honour! A
military man, my dear. You know, a perfect general!" she whispered to
me.

Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a
mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often that it
was no easy matter to get her out of the court. When this was at last
done, and addressing Mr. George as "General," she gave him her arm,
to the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was
so discomposed and begged me so respectfully "not to desert him" that
I could not make up my mind to do it, especially as Miss Flite was
always tractable with me and as she too said, "Fitz Jarndyce, my
dear, you will accompany us, of course." As Richard seemed quite
willing, and even anxious, that we should see them safely to their
destination, we agreed to do so. And as Mr. George informed us that
Gridley's mind had run on Mr. Jarndyce all the afternoon after
hearing of their interview in the morning, I wrote a hasty note in
pencil to my guardian to say where we were gone and why. Mr. George
sealed it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and
we sent it off by a ticket-porter.

We then took a hackney-coach and drove away to the neighbourhood of
Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which Mr.
George apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the door of
which was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to
the door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with grey hair,
wearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a
broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-beaded cane, addressed
him.

"I ask your pardon, my good friend," said he, "but is this George's
Shooting Gallery?"

"It is, sir," returned Mr. George, glancing up at the great letters
in which that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall.

"Oh! To be sure!" said the old gentleman, following his eyes. "Thank
you. Have you rung the bell?"

"My name is George, sir, and I have rung the bell."

"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Your name is George? Then I am
here as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?"

"No, sir. You have the advantage of me."

"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Then it was your young man who
came for me. I am a physician and was requested--five minutes ago--to
come and visit a sick man at George's Shooting Gallery."

"The muffled drums," said Mr. George, turning to Richard and me and
gravely shaking his head. "It's quite correct, sir. Will you please
to walk in."

The door being at that moment opened by a very singular-looking
little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and hands and
dress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage into
a large building with bare brick walls where there were targets, and
guns, and swords, and other things of that kind. When we had all
arrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his hat, appeared
to vanish by magic and to leave another and quite a different man in
his place.

"Now lookee here, George," said the man, turning quickly round upon
him and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. "You know
me, and I know you. You're a man of the world, and I'm a man of the
world. My name's Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a
peace-warrant against Gridley. You have kept him out of the way a
long time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit."

Mr. George, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head.

"Now, George," said the other, keeping close to him, "you're a
sensible man and a well-conducted man; that's what YOU are, beyond a
doubt. And mind you, I don't talk to you as a common character,
because you have served your country and you know that when duty
calls we must obey. Consequently you're very far from wanting to give
trouble. If I required assistance, you'd assist me; that's what YOU'D
do. Phil Squod, don't you go a-sidling round the gallery like
that"--the dirty little man was shuffling about with his shoulder
against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a manner that
looked threatening--"because I know you and won't have it."

"Phil!" said Mr. George.

"Yes, guv'ner."

"Be quiet."

The little man, with a low growl, stood still.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Bucket, "you'll excuse anything that
may appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name's Inspector Bucket
of the Detective, and I have a duty to perform. George, I know where
my man is because I was on the roof last night and saw him through
the skylight, and you along with him. He is in there, you know,"
pointing; "that's where HE is--on a sofy. Now I must see my man, and
I must tell my man to consider himself in custody; but you know me,
and you know I don't want to take any uncomfortable measures. You
give me your word, as from one man to another (and an old soldier,
mind you, likewise), that it's honourable between us two, and I'll
accommodate you to the utmost of my power."

"I give it," was the reply. "But it wasn't handsome in you, Mr.
Bucket."

"Gammon, George! Not handsome?" said Mr. Bucket, tapping him on his
broad breast again and shaking hands with him. "I don't say it wasn't
handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally
good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life
Guardsman! Why, he's a model of the whole British army in himself,
ladies and gentlemen. I'd give a fifty-pun' note to be such a figure
of a man!"

The affair being brought to this head, Mr. George, after a little
consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called
him), taking Miss Flite with him. Mr. Bucket agreeing, they went away
to the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by
a table covered with guns. Mr. Bucket took this opportunity of
entering into a little light conversation, asking me if I were afraid
of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking Richard if he were a
good shot; asking Phil Squod which he considered the best of those
rifles and what it might be worth first-hand, telling him in return
that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, for he was
naturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman, and
making himself generally agreeable.

After a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and
Richard and I were going quietly away when Mr. George came after us.
He said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would take
a visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly passed his lips
when the bell was rung and my guardian appeared, "on the chance," he
slightly observed, "of being able to do any little thing for a poor
fellow involved in the same misfortune as himself." We all four went
back together and went into the place where Gridley was.

It was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted
wood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high and
only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high gallery
roof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr. Bucket had
looked down. The sun was low--near setting--and its light came redly
in above, without descending to the ground. Upon a plain
canvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire, dressed much as we
had seen him last, but so changed that at first I recognized no
likeness in his colourless face to what I recollected.

He had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling on
his grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were
covered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of
such tokens. Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little
mad woman were side by side and, as it were, alone. She sat on a
chair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them.

His voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his
strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that had
at last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of form
and colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from
Shropshire whom we had spoken with before.

He inclined his head to Richard and me and spoke to my guardian.

"Mr. Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not
long to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir. You
are a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour you."

They shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of
comfort to him.

"It may seem strange to you, sir," returned Gridley; "I should not
have liked to see you if this had been the first time of our meeting.
But you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up with my
single hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to the
last, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so
I don't mind your seeing me, this wreck."

"You have been courageous with them many and many a time," returned
my guardian.

"Sir, I have been," with a faint smile. "I told you what would come
of it when I ceased to be so, and see here! Look at us--look at us!"
He drew the hand Miss Flite held through her arm and brought her
something nearer to him.

"This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and
hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone
comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many
suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on
earth that Chancery has not broken."

"Accept my blessing, Gridley," said Miss Flite in tears. "Accept my
blessing!"

"I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr.
Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that I
could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were until
I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have
been wearing out, I don't know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I
hope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody here will
lead them to believe that I died defying them, consistently and
perseveringly, as I did through so many years."

Here Mr. Bucket, who was sitting in a corner by the door,
good-naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer.

"Come, come!" he said from his corner. "Don't go on in that way, Mr.
Gridley. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little low
sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You'll lose your temper with the
whole round of 'em, again and again; and I shall take you on a score
of warrants yet, if I have luck."

He only shook his head.

"Don't shake your head," said Mr. Bucket. "Nod it; that's what I want
to see you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have had
together! Haven't I seen you in the Fleet over and over again for
contempt? Haven't I come into court, twenty afternoons for no other
purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog? Don't you
remember when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace
was sworn against you two or three times a week? Ask the little old
lady there; she has been always present. Hold up, Mr. Gridley, hold
up, sir!"

"What are you going to do about him?" asked George in a low voice.

"I don't know yet," said Bucket in the same tone. Then resuming his
encouragement, he pursued aloud: "Worn out, Mr. Gridley? After
dodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the roof here
like a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? That ain't like
being worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you want. You
want excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that's what YOU want.
You're used to it, and you can't do without it. I couldn't myself.
Very well, then; here's this warrant got by Mr. Tulkinghorn of
Lincoln's Inn Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen counties since.
What do you say to coming along with me, upon this warrant, and
having a good angry argument before the magistrates? It'll do you
good; it'll freshen you up and get you into training for another turn
at the Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised to hear a man of your
energy talk of giving in. You mustn't do that. You're half the fun of
the fair in the Court of Chancery. George, you lend Mr. Gridley a
hand, and let's see now whether he won't be better up than down."

"He is very weak," said the trooper in a low voice.

"Is he?" returned Bucket anxiously. "I only want to rouse him. I
don't like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It would
cheer him up more than anything if I could make him a little waxy
with me. He's welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. I
shall never take advantage of it."

The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, which still rings in my
ears.

"Oh, no, Gridley!" she cried as he fell heavily and calmly back from
before her. "Not without my blessing. After so many years!"

The sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and
the shadow had crept upward. But to me the shadow of that pair, one
living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard's departure than the
darkness of the darkest night. And through Richard's farewell words I
heard it echoed: "Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits
and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul
alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many
suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on
earth that Chancery has not broken!"

Richard is all gung-ho about the army. Much like he had been about medicine... for three weeks. And law... for a month. But yet again, some complicated legal maneuvering makes it official. . Jarndyce has a little talk with Richard, Ada, and Esther, and tells them that since Richard and Ada are so young, they shouldn't be engaged. It's better if they are both free until Richard has his life a little more together. Ada is sad but thinks that Jarndyce is probably right. Richard is sad and furious at Jarndyce. Esther says he will never forgive him. Still, they undo the engagement. Esther helps Richard prepare for getting to his army post. She packs all his stuff and together they spend some time in London making sure everything is all set. Richard takes some fencing and shooting lessons from Mr. George at his gym. One day Mr. George comes to meet Jarndyce and Esther and freaks out when he sees her. She really looks familiar, which is crazy because they've never met before. But it really disturbs him. Jarndyce chats with Mr. George about his clients. Are they ever people who want to practice weapons skills to get revenge? Mr. George says that's happened before, but generally no. He thinks of his place as a safe way to let off steam for angry people. Speaking of angry people - it turns out both Mr. George and Jarndyce know Gridley, the angriest guy ever. Since this is Richard's last day before leaving, he and Esther go to check out the doings at the Court. Esther is shocked that everyone there is totally calm and happy and making jokes about the Jarndyce case. That is pretty upsetting when you consider all the people whose lives have been ruined by this horrible endless legal nonsense. The session is quickly over and nothing has gotten done. Shocker. Richard looks all tired and worn out. Suddenly Esther sees Mr. George in the court. He is psyched to see her and Richard and asks whether they know a crazy old woman who usually hangs out in court. Esther points out Miss Flite, and Mr. George tells them that Gridley has actually been hiding out at his place, but ``he is on his deathbed and wants to see Miss Flite. They all go, and Esther leaves a note for Jarndyce telling him where they are. When they get to the place, there's a really nice old guy there. He's a doctor who says he's been called to check on a sick man. As soon as Mr. George lets him in, however, he whips off his disguise. He turns out to be... Bucket! Whoa. Bucket knows that Gridley is in there because he's been doing some surveillance on the place, but he promises that he's not going to take advantage of the situation. He's actually a pretty noble, respectable guy. Jarndyce shows up. They all come in to the room where Gridley is lying on a sofa. He's really not doing too well. Esther has trouble even recognizing him. Gridley shakes hands with Jarndyce and holds Miss Flite's hand as she sits next to him. She is the only friend he has left in the world, he says. The court has finally broken him. Bucket tries kind of a cute way to rev him back up, telling Gridley that he'll be back to fighting with the lawyers and judges in no time. But it's no use. Gridley dies holding Miss Flite's hand.

Richard obtains a commission in the army and begins his training. Mr. Jarndyce, apprehensive about the young man's instability, asks him and Ada to break their engagement. Richard takes fencing lessons from "Mr. George" , the shooting gallery owner, who mentions that one of his customers is Gridley. Gridley is, in fact, a dying man who has taken refuge in the gallery. Mr. Bucket, disguised, arrives and tries to cheer Gridley, but to no avail. Exhausted and embittered, Gridley dies.

Richard experiences the first real difficulties created by his instability and his leaving Ada parallels and foreshadows his early death. The episode focusing on Gridley is completed in such a way as to highlight the evils spawned by Chancery.

"An Appeal Case" Richard tells Mr. Jarndyce he's planning to enlist in the army, and Mr. Jarndyce calls Richard, Ada, and Esther together for a discussion. Richard admits that he's in debt, but he feels confident that the Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit will serve as his security. Mr. Jarndyce explodes in anger and says that it's better to die than get involved with the Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit. He tells Richard and Ada that they must dissolve their romantic relationship and go back to being just cousins because Richard is leaving for a post in Ireland. If they will be together in the future, then it will happen in the future. The two reluctantly agree. Esther says that this is the beginning of an estrangement between Richard and Mr. Jarndyce. Richard, Mr. Jarndyce, and Ada go to London. George, a former cavalry soldier, visits them at their lodging. He says Richard could be a good swordsman if he would put his mind to it. George glances repeatedly at Esther and asks if he knows her from somewhere. Esther says no. George tells them about his students, including one Chancery suitor named Gridley who erupted in such violent practice shooting that George asked him to leave. Esther and Mr. Jarndyce are surprised by the coincidence. Gridley is in hiding, and George says he doesn't know where. The morning before Richard's departure, he and Esther go to the court to hear some of the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. The lord chancellor and many solicitors are gathered there. Bags and piles of papers are brought in, but the case is cut short and the papers must be brought back out again. Before Esther and Richard leave, a woman approaches Esther and introduces herself--it is Mrs. Rachael, from her godmother's house, now Mrs. Chadband. The two exchange brief pleasantries and part. George then approaches them and tells them that Gridley is hiding at his place. He says Gridley wants to see Miss Flite and asks Esther to get her. At the door to George's Shooting Gallery, they encounter an old man who says he is a physician, here to see Gridley. George lets him in, and the man instantly turns brusque, saying his name is Bucket and has a warrant against Gridley. Bucket says he spotted Gridley from the roof through the skylight. They all go in to Gridley's room with Miss Flite. Gridley is surrounded by writings. Miss Flite sits beside him and holds his hand. Gridley says the tie between him and Miss Flite is the only tie the Jarndyce case hasn't broken. Bucket tries to console Gridley, but Gridley is despondent. Bucket is worried that Gridley is giving in to despair. Then Miss Flite screams--Gridley has died

Suicide appears in both chapter 21 and chapter 22 and, coupled with the reputed suicide of Tom Jarndyce that was discussed earlier in the novel, forms a dismal motif. In chapter 21, George discusses with Grandfather Smallweed an attempted suicide of a seemingly successful man and then his eventual death by not-quite-accidental drowning. George is using the story as a kind of justification for why he never let himself be "made" by another person. In chapter 22, Mr. Tulkinghorn remembers a friend much like himself who hanged himself when he decided life was too monotonous. Although neither George nor Mr. Tulkinghorn are themselves contemplating suicide, their invocations of it suggest that they are well aware of what can happen when seekers do not find what they are searching for, or when life loses its meaning. Echoes of Richard's complaint--that his work is too monotonous--are evident in the complaint of Mr. Tulkinghorn's unfortunate friend, adding to the suggestion that a life without passion and deep engagement ultimately becomes unbearable. Worlds collide violently in chapter 22, creating a sense of building tension, intrigue, and mystery in the story. The two women caring for a sick baby during Mrs. Pardiggle's charity visit reappear in this chapter, this time meeting with Mr. Bucket and Mr. Snagsby. Jenny reveals that her baby died, but now her friend, Liz, has a baby of her own. Lady Dedlock's French maid, Mademoiselle Hortense, surprisingly appears in Mr. Tulkinghorn's office, adding to the not-so-mysterious mystery of who the woman is that Jo took to the dead lodger's grave. And Jo, who is becoming an integral figure in the novel, seems to be the one common denominator among these different worlds, leading characters to one another and serving as the link between them. Although Jo makes the same claim again and again that he doesn't know anything, the fact that he seems to know everyone suggests that he's aware of much more than he lets on. Mr. Jarndyce's outburst regarding Richard's fixation on the Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit in chapter 24 adds a significantly darker note to the already disturbing case. Richard has always casually referred to his certainty that the lawsuit will provide for him and Ada in the future, but Mr. Jarndyce and Esther usually dismiss his claims wearily. This time, however, Mr. Jarndyce cries that it is "better to borrow, better to beg, better to die" than look to the lawsuit to provide. The extremity of his claim, and his unusual show of passion, shocks Richard, Ada, and Esther. The lawsuit, with its tedious, endless proceedings, usually seems like a hum in the background in the story, a strange mystery that no one is in too much hurry to unravel. At this moment, however, the true danger and darkness of the suit break the surface. When Mr. Jarndyce orders Richard and Ada to dissolve their romantic relationship, in a way he may be trying to protect Ada from Richard's fervor over the suit.

An Appeal Case Richard asks Mr. Jarndyce to change his profession to the army. The Lord Chancellor agrees but gives him a lecture. He is given an Ensign's commission in the Horse Guards and will join a regiment in Ireland. Mr. Jarndyce asks that Ada and Richard break their engagement until he can show some responsible and steady position in life. Richard disagrees and is angry, but Mr. Jarndyce is adamant that Richard must not rely on the Jarndyce case for hope. He brings up Tom Jarndyce's suicide. Ada agrees to break the engagement but claims she will not change towards Richard; he may trust her. Richard and Mr. Jarndyce are estranged. Esther and Mr. Jarndyce go with Richard to London to get his outfit ready for leaving. They meet Mr. George, who has been training Richard at arms. He tells them Richard would be good at the gun and sword if he applied himself. Mr. George seems taken with Esther and thinks he has seen her before. Mr. George earns a poor living with few students but mentions he has had French women practicing the gun. Mr. George knows that Mr. Jarndyce is a Chancery suitor and says he has known another who came to shoot to get off steam. It was Mr. Gridley, who is now hiding from the law, for contempt of court. On Richard's last day before embarking, he proposes to Esther they go to court to hear how the case is coming. She has never been and is surprised that from the procedural point of view it goes smoothly, in contrast to all the lives it is wrecking. Mr. Guppy sees Esther and introduces her to Mrs. Rachel Chadband, the former housekeeper of her aunt. Mr. George interrupts with an urgent message for Miss Flite to come with him. Gridley is in hiding at the shooting gallery, is dying, and would like to see his friend, Miss Flite. At Leicester Square, Inspector Bucket is already there to arrest Gridley, but Gridley is dying, with Jarndyce, Richard, Miss Flite, Mr. George, and Esther gathered around. Bucket begins to plead with him to pull through and resume his anger, so he can have another go round with him and the court. But Gridley is at last worn out and dies, taking special leave of Miss Flite, his most constant fellow sufferer.

Commentary on Chapter XXIV Mr. George predicts that Gridley will soon die, for "You may file a strong man's heart away for a good many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last" . In court, Esther sees the "full dress and ceremony" of the wigged attorneys, that represent "waste, and want, and beggared misery" . Once again Bucket seems to be in sympathy with those he must hunt. He begs Gridley, the man he came to arrest, to have heart so they can keep up their game. Gridley says that at least "I stood up with my single hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to the last" . He takes leave of Miss Flite because "there is a tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken" . He confirms George's prediction that he broke suddenly "in an hour" . He shakes the hand of John Jarndyce as a "good man, superior to injustice" . Jarndyce seems to be the only man involved in the case to stay aloof from the power of Chancery. He does what he can to remedy the ills by caring for the victims of the suit, but his young ward, Richard, seems headed for the same kind of crack-up that he witnesses here with Gridley. One after the other they fall before the machinery of the law, which, as Esther observes is so well oiled and ceremonious.


Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All

There is disquietude in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Black
suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook's Courtiers
are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but Mr.
Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it.

For Tom-all-Alone's and Lincoln's Inn Fields persist in harnessing
themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr.
Snagsby's imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are
Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the
law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in
the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles
away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr. Snagsby pauses
in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes
and stares at the kitchen wall.

Mr. Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with.
Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of
it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter
is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and
coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the
surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the
mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers,
whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal
neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective Mr.
Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to
be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some
dangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it is the fearful
peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of his daily life, at
any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at any
entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may
take air and fire, explode, and blow up--Mr. Bucket only knows whom.

For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many
men unknown do) and says, "Is Mr. Snagsby in?" or words to that
innocent effect, Mr. Snagsby's heart knocks hard at his guilty
breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they are
made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the
counter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why they
can't speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys persist in
walking into Mr. Snagsby's sleep and terrifying him with
unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little
dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the
morning, Mr. Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his
little woman shaking him and saying "What's the matter with the man!"

The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. To
know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has under
all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth,
which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head, gives Mr.
Snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who
has a reservation from his master and will look anywhere rather than
meet his eye.

These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not
lost upon her. They impel her to say, "Snagsby has something on his
mind!" And thus suspicion gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street.
From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as natural
and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy
gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was
always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs.
Snagsby's breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr.
Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's letters; to
private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and
iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a
general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.

Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes
ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The 'prentices
think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times. Guster
holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where
they were found floating among the orphans) that there is buried
money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white
beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he said
the Lord's Prayer backwards.

"Who was Nimrod?" Mrs. Snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself. "Who
was that lady--that creature? And who is that boy?" Now, Nimrod being
as dead as the mighty hunter whose name Mrs. Snagsby has
appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her mental
eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy. "And who,"
quoth Mrs. Snagsby for the thousand and first time, "is that boy? Who
is that--!" And there Mrs. Snagsby is seized with an inspiration.

He has no respect for Mr. Chadband. No, to be sure, and he wouldn't
have, of course. Naturally he wouldn't, under those contagious
circumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr. Chadband--why,
Mrs. Snagsby heard it herself with her own ears!--to come back, and
be told where he was to go, to be addressed by Mr. Chadband; and he
never came! Why did he never come? Because he was told not to come.
Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha! Mrs. Snagsby sees it all.

But happily (and Mrs. Snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly
smiles) that boy was met by Mr. Chadband yesterday in the streets;
and that boy, as affording a subject which Mr. Chadband desires to
improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was
seized by Mr. Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to
the police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived and
unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear in
Cook's Court to-morrow night, "to--mor--row--night," Mrs. Snagsby
repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and another tight
shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will be here, and
to-morrow night Mrs. Snagsby will have her eye upon him and upon some
one else; and oh, you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says
Mrs. Snagsby with haughtiness and scorn), but you can't blind ME!

Mrs. Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody's ears, but holds her
purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the savoury
preparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes. Comes Mr.
Snagsby in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when the gorging
vessel is replete) the 'prentices and Guster, to be edified; comes at
last, with his slouching head, and his shuffle backward, and his
shuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right, and his shuffle to the
left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy hand, which he picks as if
it were some mangy bird he had caught and was plucking before eating
raw, Jo, the very, very tough subject Mr. Chadband is to improve.

Mrs. Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo as he is brought into the
little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr. Snagsby the moment he
comes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr. Snagsby? Mr. Snagsby looks at
him. Why should he do that, but that Mrs. Snagsby sees it all? Why
else should that look pass between them, why else should Mr. Snagsby
be confused and cough a signal cough behind his hand? It is as clear
as crystal that Mr. Snagsby is that boy's father.

"Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily
exudations from his reverend visage. "Peace be with us! My friends,
why with us? Because," with his fat smile, "it cannot be against us,
because it must be for us; because it is not hardening, because it is
softening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but comes home
unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My
human boy, come forward!"

Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband lays the same on Jo's
arm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his
reverend friend's intentions and not at all clear but that something
practical and painful is going to be done to him, mutters, "You let
me alone. I never said nothink to you. You let me alone."

"No, my young friend," says Chadband smoothly, "I will not let you
alone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a
toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are
become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so
employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your
profit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My young
friend, sit upon this stool."

Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman
wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms and is got
into the required position with great difficulty and every possible
manifestation of reluctance.

When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband, retiring
behind the table, holds up his bear's-paw and says, "My friends!"
This is the signal for a general settlement of the audience. The
'prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. Guster falls into
a staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr.
Chadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches
her nearly. Mrs. Snagsby silently lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs.
Chadband composes herself grimly by the fire and warms her knees,
finding that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence.

It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member
of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his points with
that particular person, who is understood to be expected to be moved
to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of
inward working, which expression of inward working, being echoed by
some elderly lady in the next pew and so communicated like a game of
forfeits through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present,
serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering and gets Mr. Chadband's
steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chadband in saying "My
friends!" has rested his eye on Mr. Snagsby and proceeds to make that
ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate
recipient of his discourse.

"We have here among us, my friends," says Chadband, "a Gentile and a
heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's and a mover-on
upon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,"
and Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail,
bestows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying that he will throw
him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down,
"a brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid
of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious
stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of these
possessions? Why? Why is he?" Mr. Chadband states the question as if
he were propounding an entirely new riddle of much ingenuity and
merit to Mr. Snagsby and entreating him not to give it up.

Mr. Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received
just now from his little woman--at about the period when Mr. Chadband
mentioned the word parents--is tempted into modestly remarking, "I
don't know, I'm sure, sir." On which interruption Mrs. Chadband
glares and Mrs. Snagsby says, "For shame!"

"I hear a voice," says Chadband; "is it a still small voice, my
friends? I fear not, though I fain would hope so--"

"Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.

"Which says, 'I don't know.' Then I will tell you why. I say this
brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of
relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and
of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in
upon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you, what is
that light?"

Mr. Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not
to be lured on to his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning
forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly
into Mr. Snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned.

"It is," says Chadband, "the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon
of moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth."

Mr. Chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at Mr.
Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that.

"Of Terewth," says Mr. Chadband, hitting him again. "Say not to me
that it is NOT the lamp of lamps. I say to you it is. I say to you, a
million of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will
proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less
you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a
speaking-trumpet! I say to you that if you rear yourself against it,
you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you
shall be flawed, you shall be smashed."

The present effect of this flight of oratory--much admired for its
general power by Mr. Chadband's followers--being not only to make Mr.
Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr. Snagsby
in the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of
brass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet
more disconcerted and is in a very advanced state of low spirits and
false position when Mr. Chadband accidentally finishes him.

"My friends," he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some
time--and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his
pocket-handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab--"to
pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to
improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to
which I have alluded. For, my young friends," suddenly addressing the
'prentices and Guster, to their consternation, "if I am told by the
doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask
what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I may wish to be informed of
that before I dose myself with either or with both. Now, my young
friends, what is this Terewth then? Firstly (in a spirit of love),
what is the common sort of Terewth--the working clothes--the
every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?"

"Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.

"Is it suppression?"

A shiver in the negative from Mrs. Snagsby.

"Is it reservation?"

A shake of the head from Mrs. Snagsby--very long and very tight.

"No, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names
belongs to it. When this young heathen now among us--who is now, my
friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set
upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I should
have to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for
his sake--when this young hardened heathen told us a story of a cock,
and of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign, was THAT the
Terewth? No. Or if it was partly, was it wholly and entirely? No, my
friends, no!"

If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman's look as it enters
at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole
tenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.

"Or, my juvenile friends," says Chadband, descending to the level of
their comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his
greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the purpose,
"if the master of this house was to go forth into the city and there
see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto him the
mistress of this house, and was to say, 'Sarah, rejoice with me, for
I have seen an elephant!' would THAT be Terewth?"

Mrs. Snagsby in tears.

"Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and
returning said 'Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,'
would THAT be Terewth?"

Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly.

"Or put it, my juvenile friends," said Chadband, stimulated by the
sound, "that the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen--for
parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt--after casting
him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the
young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and
had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their
dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher's meat and
poultry, would THAT be Terewth?"

Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an
unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook's
Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she
has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After
unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is
pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though
much exhausted, in which state of affairs Mr. Snagsby, trampled and
crushed in the piano-forte removal, and extremely timid and feeble,
ventures to come out from behind the door in the drawing-room.

All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever
picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them
out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to
be an unimprovable reprobate and that it's no good HIS trying to keep
awake, for HE won't never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that
there is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near
the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common
men, that if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the
light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it
unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without
their modest aid--it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from
it yet!

Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers and the Reverend
Chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend
Chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him
talk for five minutes. "It an't no good my waiting here no longer,"
thinks Jo. "Mr. Snagsby an't a-going to say nothink to me to-night."
And downstairs he shuffles.

But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the handrail of
the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the same
having been induced by Mrs. Snagsby's screaming. She has her own
supper of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she ventures to
interchange a word or so for the first time.

"Here's something to eat, poor boy," says Guster.

"Thank'ee, mum," says Jo.

"Are you hungry?"

"Jist!" says Jo.

"What's gone of your father and your mother, eh?"

Jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified. For this orphan
charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting has patted
him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his life that any
decent hand has been so laid upon him.

"I never know'd nothink about 'em," says Jo.

"No more didn't I of mine," cries Guster. She is repressing symptoms
favourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at something and
vanishes down the stairs.

"Jo," whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the
step.

"Here I am, Mr. Snagsby!"

"I didn't know you were gone--there's another half-crown, Jo. It was
quite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other night when
we were out together. It would breed trouble. You can't be too quiet,
Jo."

"I am fly, master!"

And so, good night.

A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-stationer
to the room he came from and glides higher up. And henceforth he
begins, go where he will, to be attended by another shadow than his
own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his
own. And into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may
pass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware! For the watchful Mrs.
Snagsby is there too--bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of
his shadow.

Ever since all the business with Bucket and Jo, Mr. Snagsby hasn't been himself. Shmoop's going to go ahead and guess that this might be because he's a reasonably decent human being and seeing how Jo lives in the horrible hell-hole that is Tom-all-Alone's has unbalanced him somewhat. Everything is freaking him out - every time a customer comes in and asks for him, every time a bell rings. Dude's having some major flashbacks. Mrs. Snagsby, meanwhile, is trying to do some detective work to figure out what in the world is wrong with him. All her thoughts center on Jo and figuring out just how he is connected to her husband. Oh, and here's a shocker - Jo never showed up the next day for more of Chadband's preaching. But somehow Chadband ran into him in the street and threatened to take him to the police if he didn't come. So the next evening at Snagsby's house, everyone is ready to listen to Chadband's gibbering nonsense, er , instructive speeches. When Jo walks in he is all confused. He quickly looks at Mr. Snagsby . Mrs. Snagsby sees this look and thinks that...her husband is Jo's father! She's no detective Bucket. Chadband lays into Jo, talking about how Jo really needs to understand the universal light and truth . He talks so well that Jo totally falls asleep. The narrator pipes in here to say that there might be a good story that Jo needs to hear , but no one cares enough to tell it to him the way it should be told to a totally illiterate boy. Meanwhile Mrs. Snagsby works herself into hysterics. She needs to be taken upstairs, so the meeting breaks up. Jo tries to leave. Guster has been quietly moved by Jo's rag clothes and generally depressing state. She finds him quickly before he leaves and gives him some food, along with a sympathetic word about also being an orphan. Aww, Guster. She's a nice one. Snagsby slips Jo a little bit of money before he leaves... which Mrs. Snagsby sees.

Mrs. Snagsby suspects that her husband is keeping a secret from her. She concludes that he is the father of Jo, and she asks Mr. Chad-band to interview Jo in Snagsby's presence. Soon she becomes convinced of her husband's guilt and falls into hysteria. Guster gives her supper to Jo and also gives him an affectionate pat on the back. Snagsby gives Jo a half-crown, unaware that Mrs. Snagsby is watching. After that, Mrs. Snagsby spies upon her husband relentlessly.

Cold, jealous, emotionally weak women like Mrs. Snagsby create a character background against which the realized femininity of Esther and Ada is all the more impressive. The sharp contrasts also create a dramatic effect and, at the same time, give Bleak House the variety found in real life.

"Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All" The narrator says that Mr. Snagsby is unsettled by the role he has played in the affair with Bucket, Jo, and Mr. Tulkinghorn. He doesn't know what is going on and feels like he is "party to some dangerous secret. He is edgy and gets nervous when anyone comes to the shop looking for him. Mrs. Snagsby knows Mr. Snagsby has a secret, and she searches his letters, pockets, ledger, and safe while he's sleeping. She listens at doors and watches at windows. She is constantly alert. She incorrectly pieces together the random bits of things she learns and hears. Mr. Chadband has run into Jo on the street and asked him to come to Cook's Court to be improved. Mrs. Snagsby decides that she will watch Jo and someone else very closely--nothing will get by her. When the group arrives at the house, including the Chadbands, Jo, Guster, and the apprentices, Mrs. Snagsby watches Jo carefully. She thinks he looks right at Snagsby when he enters the room and thinks that Snagsby is sending a signal when he coughs. She jumps to the conclusion that Jo is Mr. Snagsby's son. Mr. Chadband orates relentlessly about Jo's lot in life and the need for improvement. Mr. Chadband likes to fixate on one person in his audience to give his lectures more effect, and tonight he focuses on Mr. Snagsby. Mrs. Snagsby is convinced that Chadband's glances are weighted with meaning, and she reacts strongly and audibly to his words, eventually sobbing and giving way to spasms. She has to be carried upstairs. Jo finally gets to go home. Before he leaves the house, Mr. Snagsby slips Jo a half-crown and says it was right for Jo to say nothing about seeing him with a lady the other night. The narrator says that Mrs. Snagsby will be with Mr. Snagsby like his own shadow

Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All The narrator intersperses tragic scenes with comic ones, such as in this chapter with the Snagsbys. Mr. Snagsby has changed since he saw Tom-all-Alone's, and Mrs. Snagsby's watchful eye sees it. Snagsby does not know how to express it except, "Something is wrong somewhere" . It seems a great secret that he must keep to himself because Bucket told him to. He cannot explain why he was late because of the excursion to find Jo. Mrs. Snagsby begins to suspect her husband of all sorts of things, wondering who Nemo was, and who Jo was. She decides Jo must be the natural son of Mr. Snagsby. When Reverend Chadband makes a sermon on Jo in the Snagsby drawing room, Mrs. Snagby wrests out a secret meaning from every phrase, sobbing loudly at Mr. Snagsby's supposed infidelity until she has a fit and has to be carried out of the room. Guster the maid gives Jo something to eat and speaks to him as a person, one of the few times anyone has been kind to him.

Commentary on Chapter XXV Snagsby is a decent man, and he is in shock at the revelation of Jo's life in the slum. He does not know how to talk about it, and he has sworn secrecy to Inspector Bucket about the incident. This is sure to upset his household, for Mrs. Snagsby cannot abide any secrets. The narrator has a chance to satirize her and the Chadbands at the same time, for we hear one of the minister's nonsensical sermons on Jo and poverty. As in the case with Mrs. Pardiggle's do-gooding mission, the upper classes cannot help or comfort the poorer classes, because 1) they lack the experience of living in such conditions, and 2) the problem seems to be impersonal and bigger than any individual to help. In Tom-all-Alone's, Liz and Jenny, the slum mothers, could comfort each other. Here, it is Guster, who came from a workhouse, who knows how to talk to Jo and make him feel like a person. Chadband keeps calling Jo a human boy, but he exhibits him like an animal in a zoo and talks about him, not to him. Poor Snagsby has been shaken by the human misery he has witnessed, and Mrs. Snagsby decides his strange behavior is about a secret love affair.