Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest business of life; diving through law and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what and collects about us nobody knows whence or how-- we only knowing in general that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to shovel it away--the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and bottle shop and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise, lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook.
"This is where he lives, sir," says the law-stationer.
"This is where he lives, is it?" says the lawyer unconcernedly.
"Thank you."
"Are you not going in, sir?"
"No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present.
Good evening.
Thank you!"
Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat and returns to his little woman and his tea.
But Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present.
He goes a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and enters it straight.
It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by a fire.
The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed candle in his hand.
"Pray is your lodger within?"
"Male or female, sir?" says Mr. Krook.
"Male.
The person who does copying."
Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly.
Knows him by sight.
Has an indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.
"Did you wish to see him, sir?"
"Yes."
"It's what I seldom do myself," says Mr. Krook with a grin.
"Shall I call him down?
But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!"
"I'll go up to him, then," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
"Second floor, sir.
Take the candle.
Up there!"
Mr. Krook, with his cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after Mr. Tulkinghorn.
"Hi-hi!" he says when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly disappeared.
The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail.
The cat expands her wicked mouth and snarls at him.
"Order, Lady Jane!
Behave yourself to visitors, my lady!
You know what they say of my lodger?" whispers Krook, going up a step or two.
"What do they say of him?"
"They say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and I know better--he don't buy.
I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so black-humoured and gloomy that I believe he'd as soon make that bargain as any other.
Don't put him out, sir.
That's my advice!"
Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way.
He comes to the dark door on the second floor.
He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.
The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it if he had not.
It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, and dirt.
In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as if poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low.
In the corner by the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a wilderness marked with a rain of ink. In another corner a ragged old portmanteau on one of the two chairs serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man.
The floor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth.
No curtain veils the darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in--the banshee of the man upon the bed.