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

are confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many

such wants in the profession to which I belong. But if you are

afraid of doing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind

at rest about that.”

“Aye! He is dead, sir.”

“IS he?” Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write.

“Well, sir,” says the trooper, looking into his hat after another

disconcerted pause, “I am sorry not to have given you more

satisfaction. If it would be any satisfaction to any one that I

should be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing

to do with this by a friend of mine who has a better head for

business than I have, and who is an old soldier, I am willing to

consult with him. I—I really am so completely smothered myself at

present,” says Mr. George, passing his hand hopelessly across his

brow, “that I don’t know but what it might be a satisfaction to

me.”

Mr. Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so

strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper’s taking counsel

with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of

five guineas or more, that Mr. George engages to go and see him.

Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing either way.

“I’ll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir,” says the

trooper, “and I’ll take the liberty of looking in again with the

final answer in the course of the day. Mr. Smallweed, if you wish

to be carried downstairs—”

“In a moment, my dear friend, in a moment. Will you first let me

speak half a word with this gentleman in private?”

“Certainly, sir. Don’t hurry yourself on my account.” The trooper

retires to a distant part of the room and resumes his curious

inspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise.

“If I wasn’t as weak as a brimstone baby, sir,” whispers

Grandfather Smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the

lapel of his coat and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of

his angry eyes, “I’d tear the writing away from him. He’s got it

buttoned in his breast. I saw him put it there. Judy saw him put

it there. Speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say you saw him put it there!”

This vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a

thrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for his strength,

and he slips away out of his chair, drawing Mr. Tulkinghorn with

him, until he is arrested by Judy, and well shaken.

“Violence will not do for me, my friend,” Mr. Tulkinghorn then

remarks coolly.

“No, no, I know, I know, sir. But it’s chafing and galling—it’s—

it’s worse than your smattering chattering magpie of a grandmother,”

to the imperturbable Judy, who only looks at the fire, “to know he

has got what’s wanted and won’t give it up. He, not to give it up!

HE! A vagabond! But never mind, sir, never mind. At the most, he

has only his own way for a little while. I have him periodically

in a vice. I’ll twist him, sir. I’ll screw him, sir. If he won’t

do it with a good grace, I’ll make him do it with a bad one, sir!

Now, my dear Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed, winking at

the lawyer hideously as he releases him, “I am ready for your kind

assistance, my excellent friend!”

Mr. Tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of amusement manifesting

itself through his self-possession, stands on the hearth-rug with

his back to the fire, watching the disappearance of Mr. Smallweed

and acknowledging the trooper’s parting salute with one slight nod.

It is more difficult to get rid of the old gentleman, Mr. George

finds, than to bear a hand in carrying him downstairs, for when he

is replaced in his conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject

of the guineas and retains such an affectionate hold of his button

—having, in truth, a secret longing to rip his coat open and rob

him—that some degree of force is necessary on the trooper’s part

to effect a separation. It is accomplished at last, and he

proceeds alone in quest of his adviser.

By the cloisterly Temple, and by Whitefriars (there, not without a

glance at Hanging-Sword Alley, which would seem to be something in

his way), and by Blackfriars Bridge, and Blackfriars Road, Mr.

George sedately marches to a street of little shops lying somewhere

in that ganglion of roads from Kent and Surrey, and of streets from

the bridges of London, centring in the far-famed elephant who has

lost his castle formed of a thousand four-horse coaches to a

stronger iron monster than he, ready to chop him into mince-meat

any day he dares. To one of the little shops in this street, which

is a musician’s shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some

Pan’s pipes and a tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated

scraps of music, Mr. George directs his massive tread. And halting

at a few paces from it, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with

her outer skirts tucked up, come forth with a small wooden tub, and

in that tub commence a-whisking and a-splashing on the margin of

the pavement, Mr. George says to himself, “She’s as usual, washing

greens. I never saw her, except upon a baggage-waggon, when she

wasn’t washing greens!”

The subject of this reflection is at all events so occupied in

washing greens at present that she remains unsuspicious of Mr.

George’s approach until, lifting up herself and her tub together

when she has poured the water off into the gutter, she finds him

standing near her. Her reception of him is not flattering.

“George, I never see you but I wish you was a hundred mile away!”

The trooper, without remarking on this welcome, follows into the

musical-instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of greens

upon the counter, and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms

upon it.

“I never,” she says, “George, consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute

when you’re near him. You are that restless and that roving—”

“Yes! I know I am, Mrs. Bagnet. I know I am.”

“You know you are!” says Mrs. Bagnet. “What’s the use of that?

WHY are you?”

“The nature of the animal, I suppose,” returns the trooper good-humouredly.

“Ah!” cries Mrs. Bagnet, something shrilly. “But what satisfaction

will the nature of the animal be to me when the animal shall have

tempted my Mat away from the musical business to New Zealand or

Australey?”

Mrs. Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather large-boned, a little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and

wind which have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy,

wholesome, and bright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced

woman of from forty-five to fifty. Clean, hardy, and so

economically dressed (though substantially) that the only article

of ornament of which she stands possessed appear’s to be her

wedding-ring, around which her finger has grown to be so large

since it was put on that it will never come off again until it

shall mingle with Mrs. Bagnet’s dust.

“Mrs. Bagnet,” says the trooper, “I am on my parole with you. Mat

will get no harm from me. You may trust me so far.”

“Well, I think I may. But the very looks of you are unsettling,”

Mrs. Bagnet rejoins. “Ah, George, George! If you had only settled

down and married Joe Pouch’s widow when he died in North America,

SHE’D have combed your hair for you.”

“It was a chance for me, certainly,” returns the trooper half

laughingly, half seriously, “but I shall never settle down into a

respectable man now. Joe Pouch’s widow might have done me good—

there was something in her, and something of her—but I couldn’t

make up my mind to it. If I had had the luck to meet with such a

wife as Mat found!”

Mrs. Bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be under little reserve

with a good sort of fellow, but to be another good sort of fellow

herself for that matter, receives this compliment by flicking Mr.

George in the face with a head of greens and taking her tub into

the little room behind the shop.

“Why, Quebec, my poppet,” says George, following, on invitation,

into that department. “And little Malta, too! Come and kiss your

Bluffy!”

These young ladies—not supposed to have been actually christened

by the names applied to them, though always so called in the family

from the places of their birth in barracks—are respectively

employed on three-legged stools, the younger (some five or six

years old) in learning her letters out of a penny primer, the elder

(eight or nine perhaps) in teaching her and sewing with great

assiduity. Both hail Mr. George with acclamations as an old friend

and after some kissing and romping plant their stools beside him.

“And how’s young Woolwich?” says Mr. George.

“Ah! There now!” cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning about from her

saucepans (for she is cooking dinner) with a bright flush on her

face. “Would you believe it? Got an engagement at the theayter,

with his father, to play the fife in a military piece.”

“Well done, my godson!” cries Mr. George, slapping his thigh.

“I believe you!” says Mrs. Bagnet. “He’s a Briton. That’s what

Woolwich is. A Briton!”

“And Mat blows away at his bassoon, and you’re respectable

civilians one and all,” says Mr. George. “Family people. Children

growing up. Mat’s old mother in Scotland, and your old father

somewhere else, corresponded with, and helped a little, and—well,

well! To be sure, I don’t know why I shouldn’t be wished a hundred

mile away, for I have not much to do with all this!”

Mr. George is becoming thoughtful, sitting before the fire in the

whitewashed room, which has a sanded floor and a barrack smell and

contains nothing superfluous and has not a visible speck of dirt or

dust in it, from the faces of Quebec and Malta to the bright tin

pots and pannikins upon the dresser shelves—Mr. George is becoming

thoughtful, sitting here while Mrs. Bagnet is busy, when Mr. Bagnet

and young Woolwich opportunely come home. Mr. Bagnet is an ex-artilleryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows and whiskers

like the fibres of a coco-nut, not a hair upon his head, and a

torrid complexion. His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at

all unlike the tones of the instrument to which he is devoted.

Indeed there may be generally observed in him an unbending,

unyielding, brass-bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of

the human orchestra. Young Woolwich is the type and model of a

young drummer.

Both father and son salute the trooper heartily. He saying, in due

season, that he has come to advise with Mr. Bagnet, Mr. Bagnet

hospitably declares that he will hear of no business until after

dinner and that his friend shall not partake of his counsel without

first partaking of boiled pork and greens. The trooper yielding to

this invitation, he and Mr. Bagnet, not to embarrass the domestic

preparations, go forth to take a turn up and down the little

street, which they promenade with measured tread and folded arms,

as if it were a rampart.

“George,” says Mr. Bagnet. “You know me. It’s my old girl that

advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her.

Discipline must be maintained. Wait till the greens is off her

mind. Then we’ll consult. Whatever the old girl says, do—do it!”

“I