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

inclined to smoke it to-day.”

“Ain’t you?” returns the old man. “Judy, bring the pipe.”

“The fact is, Mr. Smallweed,” proceeds George, “that I find myself

in rather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that

your friend in the city has been playing tricks.”

“Oh, dear no!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “He never does that!”

“Don’t he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might

be HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter.”

Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of

the letter.

“What does it mean?” asks Mr. George.

“Judy,” says the old man. “Have you got the pipe? Give it to me.

Did you say what does it mean, my good friend?”

“Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed,” urges the trooper,

constraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he

can, holding the open letter in one hand and resting the broad

knuckles of the other on his thigh, “a good lot of money has passed

between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are

both well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am

prepared to do the usual thing which I have done regularly and to

keep this matter going. I never got a letter like this from you

before, and I have been a little put about by it this morning,

because here’s my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had none of

the money—”

“I DON’T know it, you know,” says the old man quietly.

“Why, confound you—it, I mean—I tell you so, don’t I?”

“Oh, yes, you tell me so,” returns Grandfather Smallweed. “But I

don’t know it.”

“Well!” says the trooper, swallowing his fire. “I know it.”

Mr. Smallweed replies with excellent temper, “Ah! That’s quite

another thing!” And adds, “But it don’t matter. Mr. Bagnet’s

situation is all one, whether or no.”

The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair

comfortably and to propitiate Mr. Smallweed by taking him upon his

own terms.

“That’s just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here’s

Matthew Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see,

that makes his good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for

whereas I’m a harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more

kicks than halfpence come natural to, why he’s a steady family man,

don’t you see? Now, Mr. Smallweed,” says the trooper, gaining

confidence as he proceeds in his soldierly mode of doing business,

“although you and I are good friends enough in a certain sort of a

way, I am well aware that I can’t ask you to let my friend Bagnet

off entirely.”

“Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr.

George.” (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather

Smallweed to-day.)

“And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as

your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!”

“Ha ha ha!” echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard

manner and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet’s

natural gravity is much deepened by the contemplation of that

venerable man.

“Come!” says the sanguine George. “I am glad to find we can be

pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here’s my

friend Bagnet, and here am I. We’ll settle the matter on the spot,

if you please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you’ll ease my

friend Bagnet’s mind, and his family’s mind, a good deal if you’ll

just mention to him what our understanding is.”

Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, “Oh, good

gracious! Oh!” Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is

found to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose

chin has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and

contempt. Mr. Bagnet’s gravity becomes yet more profound.

“But I think you asked me, Mr. George”—old Smallweed, who all this

time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now—“I think you

asked me, what did the letter mean?”

“Why, yes, I did,” returns the trooper in his off-hand way, “but I

don’t care to know particularly, if it’s all correct and pleasant.”

Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper’s

head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.

“That’s what it means, my dear friend. I’ll smash you. I’ll

crumble you. I’ll powder you. Go to the devil!”

The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet’s gravity

has now attained its profoundest point.

“Go to the devil!” repeats the old man. “I’ll have no more of your

pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You’re an independent

dragoon, too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been

there before) and show your independence now, will you? Come, my

dear friend, there’s a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy;

put these blusterers out! Call in help if they don’t go. Put ‘em

out!”

He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on

the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his

amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is

instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr.

George awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr. Bagnet, in a

perfect abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little

parlour window like a sentry and looks in every time he passes,

apparently revolving something in his mind.

“Come, Mat,” says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, “we

must try the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?”

Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour,

replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, “If my

old girl had been here—I’d have told him!” Having so discharged

himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and

marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.

When they present themselves in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Mr.

Tulkinghorn is engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all

willing to see them, for when they have waited a full hour, and the

clerk, on his bell being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning

as much, he brings forth no more encouraging message than that Mr.

Tulkinghorn has nothing to say to them and they had better not

wait. They do wait, however, with the perseverance of military

tactics, and at last the bell rings again and the client in

possession comes out of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s room.

The client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Rouncewell,

housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a

fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. She is

treated with some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his

pew to show her through the outer office and to let her out. The

old lady is thanking him for his attention when she observes the

comrades in waiting.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?”

The clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr.

George not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. Mr.

Bagnet takes upon himself to reply, “Yes, ma’am. Formerly.”

“I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at

the sight of you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless

you, gentlemen! You’ll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once

who went for a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in

his bold way, though some people did disparage him to his poor

mother. I ask your pardon for troubling you, sir. God bless you,

gentlemen!”

“Same to you, ma’am!” returns Mr. Bagnet with right good will.

There is something very touching in the earnestness of the old

lady’s voice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old

figure. But Mr. George is so occupied with the almanac over the

fire-place (calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he

does not look round until she has gone away and the door is closed

upon her.

“George,” Mr. Bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the

almanac at last. “Don’t be cast down! ‘Why, soldiers, why—should

we be melancholy, boys?’ Cheer up, my hearty!”

The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there

and Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility,

“Let ‘em come in then!” they pass into the great room with the

painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire.

“Now, you men, what do you want? Sergeant, I told you the last

time I saw you that I don’t desire your company here.”

Sergeant replies—dashed within the last few minutes as to his

usual manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage—that he

has received this letter, has been to Mr. Smallweed about it, and

has been referred there.

“I have nothing to say to you,” rejoins Mr. Tulkinghorn. “If you

get into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences.

You have no occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?”

Sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money.

“Very well! Then the other man—this man, if this is he—must pay

it for you.”

Sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with

the money either.

“Very well! Then you must pay it between you or you must both be

sued for it and both suffer. You have had the money and must

refund it. You are not to pocket other people’s pounds, shillings,

and pence and escape scot-free.”

The lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire. Mr.

George hopes he will have the goodness to—

“I tell you, sergeant, I have nothing to say to you. I don’t like

your associates and don’t want you here. This matter is not at all

in my course of practice and is not in my office. Mr. Smallweed is

good enough to offer these affairs to me, but they are not in my

way. You must go to Melchisedech’s in Clifford’s Inn.”

“I must make an apology to you, sir,” says Mr. George, “for

pressing myself upon you with so little encouragement—which is

almost as unpleasant to me as it can be to you—but would you let

me say a private word to you?”

Mr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into

one of the window recesses. “Now! I have no time to waste.” In

the midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a

sharp look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back

to the light and to have the other with his face towards it.

“Well, sir,” says Mr. George, “this man with me is the other party

implicated in this unfortunate affair—nominally, only nominally—

and my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my

account. He is a most respectable man with a wife and family,

formerly in the Royal Artillery—”

“My friend, I don’t care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal

Artillery establishment—officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses,

guns, and ammunition.”

“‘Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife

and family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them

through this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up

without any other consideration