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

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!”