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

and with Phil, on whom Mrs. Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured

nod and smile.

“Now, George,” said Mrs. Bagnet briskly, “here we are, Lignum and

myself”—she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on

account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old

regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in

compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his

physiognomy—“just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as

usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George,

and he’ll sign it like a man.”

“I was coming to you this morning,” observes the trooper

reluctantly.

“Yes, we thought you’d come to us this morning, but we turned out

early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and

came to you instead—as you see! For Lignum, he’s tied so close

now, and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But

what’s the matter, George?” asks Mrs. Bagnet, stopping in her

cheerful talk. “You don’t look yourself.”

“I am not quite myself,” returns the trooper; “I have been a little

put out, Mrs. Bagnet.”

Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. “George!” holding

up her forefinger. “Don’t tell me there’s anything wrong about

that security of Lignum’s! Don’t do it, George, on account of the

children!”

The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage.

“George,” says Mrs. Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and

occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. “If you

have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum’s,

and if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger

of being sold up—and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain

as print—you have done a shameful action and have deceived us

cruelly. I tell you, cruelly, George. There!”

Mr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts

his large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it

from a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet.

“George,” says that old girl, “I wonder at you! George, I am

ashamed of you! George, I couldn’t have believed you would have

done it! I always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no

moss, but I never thought you would have taken away what little

moss there was for Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know

what a hard-working, steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec

and Malta and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or

could, have had the heart to serve us so. Oh, George!” Mrs.

Bagnet gathers up her cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine

manner, “How could you do it?”

Mrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as

if the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr.

George, who has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the

grey cloak and straw bonnet.

“Mat,” says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but

still looking at his wife, “I am sorry you take it so much to

heart, because I do hope it’s not so bad as that comes to. I

certainly have, this morning, received this letter”—which he reads

aloud—“but I hope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone,

why, what you say is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never

rolled in anybody’s way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least

good to. But it’s impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like

your wife and family better than I like ‘em, Mat, and I trust

you’ll look upon me as forgivingly as you can. Don’t think I’ve

kept anything from you. I haven’t had the letter more than a

quarter of an hour.”

“Old girl,” murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, “will you

tell him my opinion?”

“Oh! Why didn’t he marry,” Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and

half crying, “Joe Pouch’s widder in North America? Then he

wouldn’t have got himself into these troubles.”

“The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “puts it correct—why didn’t you?”

“Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope,” returns the

trooper. “Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to

Joe Pouch’s widder. What shall I do? You see all I have got about

me. It’s not mine; it’s yours. Give the word, and I’ll sell off

every morsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in

nearly the sum wanted, I’d have sold all long ago. Don’t believe

that I’ll leave you or yours in the lurch, Mat. I’d sell myself

first. I only wish,” says the trooper, giving himself a

disparaging blow in the chest, “that I knew of any one who’d buy

such a second-hand piece of old stores.”

“Old girl,” murmurs Mr. Bagnet, “give him another bit of my mind.”

“George,” says the old girl, “you are not so much to be blamed, on

full consideration, except for ever taking this business without

the means.”

“And that was like me!” observes the penitent trooper, shaking his

head. “Like me, I know.”

“Silence! The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “is correct—in her way

of giving my opinions—hear me out!”

“That was when you never ought to have asked for the security,

George, and when you never ought to have got it, all things

considered. But what’s done can’t be undone. You are always an

honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your

power, though a little flighty. On the other hand, you can’t admit

but what it’s natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging

over our heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. Come!

Forget and forgive all round!”

Mrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her

husband the other, Mr. George gives each of them one of his and

holds them while he speaks.

“I do assure you both, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to discharge

this obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together

has gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly

enough here, Phil and I. But the gallery don’t quite do what was

expected of it, and it’s not—in short, it’s not the mint. It was

wrong in me to take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner

drawn into that step, and I thought it might steady me, and set me

up, and you’ll try to overlook my having such expectations, and

upon my soul, I am very much obliged to you, and very much ashamed

of myself.” With these concluding words, Mr. George gives a shake

to each of the hands he holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace

or two in a broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a

final confession and were immediately going to be shot with all

military honours.

“George, hear me out!” says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. “Old

girl, go on!”

Mr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to

observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that

it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr.

Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and

hold harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr. George,

entirely assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr.

Bagnet to the enemy’s camp.

“Don’t you mind a woman’s hasty word, George,” says Mrs. Bagnet,

patting him on the shoulder. “I trust my old Lignum to you, and I

am sure you’ll bring him through it.”

The trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring

Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak,

basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of

her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of

mollifying Mr. Smallweed.

Whether there are two people in England less likely to come

satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Smallweed than Mr.

George and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned.

Also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square

shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same

limits two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the

Smallweedy affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity

through the streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr.

Bagnet, observing his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a

friendly part to refer to Mrs. Bagnet’s late sally.

“George, you know the old girl—she’s as sweet and as mild as milk.

But touch her on the children—or myself—and she’s off like

gunpowder.”

“It does her credit, Mat!”

“George,” says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, “the old

girl—can’t do anything—that don’t do her credit. More or less.

I never say so. Discipline must be maintained.”

“She’s worth her weight in gold,” says the trooper.

“In gold?” says Mr. Bagnet. “I’ll tell you what. The old girl’s

weight—is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight—in any

metal—for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl’s

metal is far more precious—than the preciousest metal. And she’s

ALL metal!”

“You are right, Mat!”

“When she took me—and accepted of the ring—she ‘listed under me

and the children—heart and head, for life. She’s that earnest,”

says Mr. Bagnet, “and true to her colours—that, touch us with a

finger—and she turns out—and stands to her arms. If the old girl

fires wide—once in a way—at the call of duty—look over it,

George. For she’s loyal!”

“Why, bless her, Mat,” returns the trooper, “I think the higher of

her for it!”

“You are right!” says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm,

though without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. “Think as

high of the old girl—as the rock of Gibraltar—and still you’ll be

thinking low—of such merits. But I never own to it before her.

Discipline must be maintained.”

These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather

Smallweed’s house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who,

having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but

indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she

consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be

inferred to give consent from the circumstance of her returning

with the words on her honey lips that they can come in if they want

to it. Thus privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with

his feet in the drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath

and Mrs. Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is

not to sing.

“My dear friend,” says Grandfather Smallweed with those two lean

affectionate arms of his stretched forth. “How de do? How de do?

Who is our friend, my dear friend?”

“Why this,” returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at

first, “is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of

ours, you know.”

“Oh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely!” The old man looks at him under his

hand.

“Hope you’re well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. George! Military

air, sir!”

No chairs being offered, Mr. George brings one forward for Bagnet

and one for himself. They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no

power of bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose.

“Judy,” says Mr. Smallweed, “bring the pipe.”

“Why, I don’t know,” Mr. George interposes, “that the young woman

need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am