Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

“Here I am,” says Bart.

“Been along with your friend again, Bart?”

Small nods.

“Dining at his expense, Bart?”

Small nods again.

“That’s right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take

warning by his foolish example. That’s the use of such a friend.

The only use you can put him to,” says the venerable sage.

His grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as

he might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a

slight wink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four

old faces then hover over teacups like a company of ghastly

cherubim, Mrs. Smallweed perpetually twitching her head and

chattering at the trivets and Mr. Smallweed requiring to be

repeatedly shaken up like a large black draught.

“Yes, yes,” says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of

wisdom. “That’s such advice as your father would have given you,

Bart. You never saw your father. More’s the pity. He was my true

son.” Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was

particularly pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear.

“He was my true son,” repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread

and butter on his knee, “a good accountant, and died fifteen years

ago.”

Mrs. Smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with

“Fifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box,

fifteen hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away

and hid!” Her worthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter,

immediately discharges the cushion at her, crushes her against

the side of her chair, and falls back in his own, overpowered.

His appearance, after visiting Mrs. Smallweed with one of

these admonitions, is particularly impressive and not wholly

prepossessing, firstly because the exertion generally twists

his black skull-cap over one eye and gives him an air of goblin

rakishness, secondly because he mutters violent imprecations

against Mrs. Smallweed, and thirdly because the contrast between

those powerful expressions and his powerless figure is suggestive

of a baleful old malignant who would be very wicked if he could.

All this, however, is so common in the Smallweed family circle that

it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely shaken and

has his internal feathers beaten up, the cushion is restored to

its usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps with her cap

adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again, ready to

be bowled down like a ninepin.

Some time elapses in the present instance before the old gentleman

is sufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even then he

mixes it up with several edifying expletives addressed to the

unconscious partner of his bosom, who holds communication with

nothing on earth but the trivets. As thus: “If your father, Bart,

had lived longer, he might have been worth a deal of money—you

brimstone chatterer!—but just as he was beginning to build up the

house that he had been making the foundations for, through many a

year—you jade of a magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you

mean!—he took ill and died of a low fever, always being a sparing

and a spare man, full of business care—I should like to throw a

cat at you instead of a cushion, and I will too if you make such a

confounded fool of yourself!—and your mother, who was a prudent

woman as dry as a chip, just dwindled away like touchwood after you

and Judy were born—you are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig.

You’re a head of swine!”

Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect

in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of

cups and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little

charwoman’s evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the

iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of

loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence.

“But your father and me were partners, Bart,” says the old

gentleman, “and when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there

is. It’s rare for you both that you went out early in life—Judy

to the flower business, and you to the law. You won’t want to

spend it. You’ll get your living without it, and put more to it.

When I am gone, Judy will go back to the flower business and you’ll

still stick to the law.”

One might infer from Judy’s appearance that her business rather lay

with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been

apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A

close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her

brother’s, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being

gone, some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some

resentful opinion that it is time he went.

“Now, if everybody has done,” says Judy, completing her

preparations, “I’ll have that girl in to her tea. She would never

leave off if she took it by herself in the kitchen.”

Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes,

sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter.

In the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed

appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the

remotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and

pouncing on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is

wonderful, evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving

seldom reached by the oldest practitioners.

“Now, don’t stare about you all the afternoon,” cries Judy, shaking

her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance

which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, “but take your

victuals and get back to your work.”

“Yes, miss,” says Charley.

“Don’t say yes,” returns Miss Smallweed, “for I know what you girls

are. Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe

you.”

Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so

disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not

to gormandize, which “in you girls,” she observes, is disgusting.

Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the

general subject of girls but for a knock at the door.

“See who it is, and don’t chew when you open it!” cries Judy.

The object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss

Smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the

bread and butter together and launching two or three dirty teacups

into the ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers

the eating and drinking terminated.

“Now! Who is it, and what’s wanted?” says the snappish Judy.

It is one Mr. George, it appears. Without other announcement or

ceremony, Mr. George walks in.

“Whew!” says Mr. George. “You are hot here. Always a fire, eh?

Well! Perhaps you do right to get used to one.” Mr. George makes

the latter remark to himself as he nods to Grandfather Smallweed.

“Ho! It’s you!” cries the old gentleman. “How de do? How de do?”

“Middling,” replies Mr. George, taking a chair. “Your

granddaughter I have had the honour of seeing before; my service to

you, miss.”

“This is my grandson,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “You ha’n’t

seen him before. He is in the law and not much at home.”

“My service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like

his sister. He is devilish like his sister,” says Mr. George,

laying a great and not altogether complimentary stress on his last

adjective.

“And how does the world use you, Mr. George?” Grandfather Smallweed

inquires, slowly rubbing his legs.

“Pretty much as usual. Like a football.”

He is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking,

with crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy

and powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been

used to a pretty rough life. What is curious about him is that he

sits forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing

space for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid

aside. His step too is measured and heavy and would go well with a

weighty clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his

mouth is set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a

great moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open

palm of his broad brown hand upon it is to the same effect.

Altogether one might guess Mr. George to have been a trooper once

upon a time.

A special contrast Mr. George makes to the Smallweed family.

Trooper was never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him.

It is a broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure and

their stunted forms, his large manner filling any amount of room

and their little narrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their

sharp spare tones, are in the strongest and the strangest

opposition. As he sits in the middle of the grim parlour, leaning

a little forward, with his hands upon his thighs and his elbows

squared, he looks as though, if he remained there long, he would

absorb into himself the whole family and the whole four-roomed

house, extra little back-kitchen and all.

“Do you rub your legs to rub life into ‘em?” he asks of Grandfather

Smallweed after looking round the room.

“Why, it’s partly a habit, Mr. George, and—yes—it partly helps

the circulation,” he replies.

“The cir-cu-la-tion!” repeats Mr. George, folding his arms upon his

chest and seeming to become two sizes larger. “Not much of that, I

should think.”

“Truly I’m old, Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “But I

can carry my years. I’m older than HER,” nodding at his wife, “and

see what she is? You’re a brimstone chatterer!” with a sudden

revival of his late hostility.

“Unlucky old soul!” says Mr. George, turning his head in that

direction. “Don’t scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her

poor cap half off her head and her poor hair all in a muddle. Hold

up, ma’am. That’s better. There we are! Think of your mother,

Mr. Smallweed,” says Mr. George, coming back to his seat from

assisting her, “if your wife an’t enough.”

“I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr. George?” the old man

hints with a leer.

The colour of Mr. George’s face rather deepens as he replies, “Why

no. I wasn’t.”

“I am astonished at it.”

“So am I. I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to

have been one. But I wasn’t. I was a thundering bad son, that’s

the long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody.”

“Surprising!” cries the old man.

“However,” Mr. George resumes, “the less said about it, the better

now. Come! You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two

months’ interest! (Bosh! It’s all correct. You needn’t be afraid

to order the pipe. Here’s the new bill, and here’s the two months’

interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it

together in my business.)”

Mr. George sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the

parlour while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy to two

black leathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he

secures the document he has just received, and from the other takes

another similar document which he hands to Mr. George,