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

More Old Soldiers Than One

Mr. George has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for

their destination is Lincoln’s Inn Fields. When the driver stops

his horses, Mr. George alights, and looking in at the window, says,

“What, Mr. Tulkinghorn’s your man, is he?”

“Yes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr. George?”

“Why, I have heard of him—seen him too, I think. But I don’t know

him, and he don’t know me.”

There ensues the carrying of Mr. Smallweed upstairs, which is done

to perfection with the trooper’s help. He is borne into Mr.

Tulkinghorn’s great room and deposited on the Turkey rug before the

fire. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will

be back directly. The occupant of the pew in the hall, having said

thus much, stirs the fire and leaves the triumvirate to warm

themselves.

Mr. George is mightily curious in respect of the room. He looks up

at the painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books,

contemplates the portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the

names on the boxes.

“‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,’” Mr. George reads thoughtfully.

“Ha! ‘Manor of Chesney Wold.’ Humph!” Mr. George stands looking

at these boxes a long while—as if they were pictures—and comes

back to the fire repeating, “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and

Manor of Chesney Wold, hey?”

“Worth a mint of money, Mr. George!” whispers Grandfather

Smallweed, rubbing his legs. “Powerfully rich!”

“Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?”

“This gentleman, this gentleman.”

“So I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I’ll hold a wager. Not

bad quarters, either,” says Mr. George, looking round again. “See

the strong-box yonder!”

This reply is cut short by Mr. Tulkinghorn’s arrival. There is no

change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in

his hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close

and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a

blind; habitually not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The

peerage may have warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than

Mr. Tulkinghorn, after all, if everything were known.

“Good morning, Mr. Smallweed, good morning!” he says as he comes

in. “You have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit down, sergeant.”

As Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat,

he looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper

stands and says within himself perchance, “You’ll do, my friend!”

“Sit down, sergeant,” he repeats as he comes to his table, which is

set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. “Cold and

raw this morning, cold and raw!” Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the

bars, alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks

(from behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting

in a little semicircle before him.

“Now, I can feel what I am about” (as perhaps he can in two

senses), “Mr. Smallweed.” The old gentleman is newly shaken up by

Judy to bear his part in the conversation. “You have brought our

good friend the sergeant, I see.”

“Yes, sir,” returns Mr. Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer’s

wealth and influence.

“And what does the sergeant say about this business?”

“Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed with a tremulous wave of

his shrivelled hand, “this is the gentleman, sir.”

Mr. George salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright

and profoundly silent—very forward in his chair, as if the full

complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him.

Mr. Tulkinghorn proceeds, “Well, George—I believe your name is

George?”

“It is so, Sir.”

“What do you say, George?”

“I ask your pardon, sir,” returns the trooper, “but I should wish

to know what YOU say?”

“Do you mean in point of reward?”

“I mean in point of everything, sir.”

This is so very trying to Mr. Smallweed’s temper that he suddenly

breaks out with “You’re a brimstone beast!” and as suddenly asks

pardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the

tongue by saying to Judy, “I was thinking of your grandmother, my

dear.”

“I supposed, sergeant,” Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one

side of his chair and crosses his legs, “that Mr. Smallweed might

have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest

compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and

were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little

services, and were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is

so, is it not?”

“Yes, sir, that is so,” says Mr. George with military brevity.

“Therefore you may happen to have in your possession something—

anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders, a letter,

anything—in Captain Hawdon’s writing. I wish to compare his

writing with some that I have. If you can give me the opportunity,

you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four, five,

guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say.”

“Noble, my dear friend!” cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up

his eyes.

“If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you

can demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing,

against your inclination—though I should prefer to have it.”

Mr. George sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the

painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr.

Smallweed scratches the air.

“The question is,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued,

uninterested way, “first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon’s

writing?”

“First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon’s writing, sir,”

repeats Mr. George.

“Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?”

“Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it,

sir,” repeats Mr. George.

“Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like

that,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of

written paper tied together.

“Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so,” repeats Mr.

George.

All three repetitions Mr. George pronounces in a mechanical manner,

looking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance

at the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to

him for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but

continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation.

“Well?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “What do you say?”

“Well, sir,” replies Mr. George, rising erect and looking immense,

“I would rather, if you’ll excuse me, have nothing to do with

this.”

Mr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, “Why not?”

“Why, sir,” returns the trooper. “Except on military compulsion, I

am not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in

Scotland a ne’er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can

stand any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned

to Mr. Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into

things of this kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that

is my sensation,” says Mr. George, looking round upon the company,

“at the present moment.”

With that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on

the lawyer’s table and three strides backward to resume his former

station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the

ground and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as

if to prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever.

Under this provocation, Mr. Smallweed’s favourite adjective of

disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words

“my dear friend” with the monosyllable “brim,” thus converting the

possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment

in his speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his

dear friend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what

so eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace,

confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable.

Mr. Tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, “You are

the best judge of your own interest, sergeant.” “Take care you do

no harm by this.” “Please yourself, please yourself.” “If you

know what you mean, that’s quite enough.” These he utters with an

appearance of perfect indifference as he looks over the papers on

his table and prepares to write a letter.

Mr. George looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling to the

ground, from the ground to Mr. Smallweed, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr.

Tulkinghorn, and from Mr. Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again,

often in his perplexity changing the leg on which he rests.

“I do assure you, sir,” says Mr. George, “not to say it

offensively, that between you and Mr. Smallweed here, I really am

being smothered fifty times over. I really am, sir. I am not a

match for you gentlemen. Will you allow me to ask why you want to

see the captain’s hand, in the case that I could find any specimen

of it?”

Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. “No. If you were a man

of business, sergeant, you would not need