Page:Bleak House.djvu/424

Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantel-shelf, and replies, “Tony, you are asked to leave that to the honor of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that friend, in those chords of the human mind which—which need not be called into agonising vibration on the present occasion—your friend is no fool. What's that?”

“It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen, and you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling.”

Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant, resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of whispering is, that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound—strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet, that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be, that the air is full of these phantoms; and the two look over their shoulders by one consent, to see that the door is shut.

“Yes, Tony?” says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire, and biting his unsteady thumb-nail. You were going to say, thirdly?”

“It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it.”

“But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony.”

“May be not, still I don't like it. Live here by yourself, and see how you like it.”

“As to dead men, Tony,” proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal, “there have been dead men in most rooms.”

“I know there have; but in most rooms you let them alone, and—and they let you alone,” Tony answers.

The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service; that he hopes so. There is an oppressive blank, until, Mr. Weevle, by stirring the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been stirred instead.

“Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about,” says he. “Let us open the window a bit, and get a mouthful of air. It's too close.”

He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in and half out of the room. The neighboring houses are too near, to admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking up; but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping on the windowsill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy tone.

“By the bye, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed;” meaning the Younger of that name. “I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family.”

“I remember,” says Tony. “I am up to all that.”

“And as to Krook,” resumes Mr. Guppy. “Now, do you suppose he really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to you, since you have been such allies?”