Bleak House

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"I should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend
in the city," returns Mr. George.

"I am very seldom out," pants Mr. Smallweed. "I haven't been out
for many months. It's inconvenient--and it comes expensive. But I
longed so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?"

"I am well enough," says Mr. George. "I hope you are the same."

"You can't be too well, my dear friend." Mr. Smallweed takes him
by both hands. "I have brought my granddaughter Judy. I couldn't
keep her away. She longed so much to see you."

"Hum! She hears it calmly!" mutters Mr. George.

"So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the
corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and
carried me here that I might see my dear friend in his own
establishment! This," says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the
bearer, who has been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws
adjusting his windpipe, "is the driver of the cab. He has nothing
extra. It is by agreement included in his fare. This person," the
other bearer, "we engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer.
Which is twopence. Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure
you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't
have employed this person."

Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a glance of considerable
terror and a half-subdued "O Lord! Oh, dear me!" Nor in his
apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for
Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap
before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the
air of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly
old bird of the crow species.

"Judy, my child," says Grandfather Smallweed, "give the person his
twopence. It's a great deal for what he has done."

The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human
fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of
London, ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a "mission" for
holding horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with
anything but transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it
over-handed, and retires.

"My dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, "would you be so
kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire,
and I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!"

His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by
the suddenness with which Mr. Squod, like a genie, catches him up,
chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.

"O Lord!" says Mr. Smallweed, panting. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my
stars! My dear friend, your workman is very strong--and very
prompt. O Lord, he is very prompt! Judy, draw me back a little.
I'm being scorched in the legs," which indeed is testified to the
noses of all present by the smell of his worsted stockings.

The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from
the fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released
his overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr.
Smallweed again says, "Oh, dear me! O Lord!" and looking about and
meeting Mr. George's glance, again stretches out both hands.

"My dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your
establishment? It's a delightful place. It's a picture! You
never find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my
dear friend?" adds Grandfather Smallweed, very ill at ease.

"No, no. No fear of that."

"And your workman. He--Oh, dear me!--he never lets anything off
without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?"

"He has never hurt anybody but himself," says Mr. George, smiling.

"But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good
deal, and he might hurt somebody else," the old gentleman returns.
"He mightn't mean it--or he even might. Mr. George, will you order
him to leave his infernal firearms alone and go away?"

Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires, empty-handed, to
the other end of the gallery. Mr. Smallweed, reassured, falls to
rubbing his legs.

"And you're doing well, Mr. George?" he says to the trooper,
squarely standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in
his hand. "You are prospering, please the Powers?"

Mr. George answers with a cool nod, adding, "Go on. You have not
come to say that, I know."

"You are so sprightly, Mr. George," returns the venerable
grandfather. "You are such good company."

"Ha ha! Go on!" says Mr. George.

"My dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp.
It might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr.
George. Curse him!" says the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy
as the trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. "He owes
me money, and might think of paying off old scores in this
murdering place. I wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and
he'd shave her head off."

Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old
man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says
quietly, "Now for it!"

"Ho!" cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful
chuckle. "Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?"

"For a pipe," says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his
chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills
it and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.

This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so
difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes
exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent
vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the
visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman's nails are
long and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green
and watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he
claws, to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless
bundle, he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed
eyes of Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something
more than the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and
pokes him in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that
part which the science of self-defence would call his wind, that in
his grievous distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour's
rammer.

When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a
white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out
her weazen forefinger and gives Mr. George one poke in the back.
The trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her
esteemed grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares
rigidly at the fire.

"Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U--u--u--ugh!" chatters Grandfather Smallweed,
swallowing his rage. "My dear friend!" (still clawing).

"I tell you what," says Mr. George. "If you want to converse with
me, you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can't go
about and about. I haven't the art to do it. I am not clever
enough. It don't suit me. When you go winding round and round
me," says the trooper, putting his pipe between his lips again,
"damme, if I don't feel as if I was being smothered!"

And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to
assure himself that he is not smothered yet.

"If you have come to give me a friendly call," continues Mr.
George, "I am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see
whether there's any property on the premises, look about you; you
are welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!"

The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives
her grandfather one ghostly poke.

"You see! It's her opinion too. And why the devil that young
woman won't sit down like a Christian," says Mr. George with his
eyes musingly fixed on Judy, "I can't comprehend."

"She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir," says Grandfather
Smallweed. "I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some
attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot"
(snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), "but I need
attention, my dear friend."

"Well!" returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old
man. "Now then?"

"My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with
a pupil of yours."

"Has he?" says Mr. George. "I am sorry to hear it."

"Yes, sir." Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. "He is a fine
young soldier now, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends
came forward and paid it all up, honourable."

"Did they?" returns Mr. George. "Do you think your friend in the
city would like a piece of advice?"

"I think he would, my dear friend. From you."

"I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter.
There's no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my
knowledge, is brought to a dead halt."

"No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. George. No, no, no, sir,"
remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare
legs. "Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and
he is good for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his
commission, and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is
good for his chance in a wife, and--oh, do you know, Mr. George, I
think my friend would consider the young gentleman good for
something yet?" says Grandfather Smallweed, turning up his velvet
cap and scratching his ear like a monkey.

Mr. George, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his
chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if
he were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has
taken.

"But to pass from one subject to another," resumes Mr. Smallweed.
"'To promote the conversation, as a joker might say. To pass, Mr.
George, from the ensign to the captain."

"What are you up to, now?" asks Mr. George, pausing with a frown in
stroking the recollection of his moustache. "What captain?"

"Our captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon."

"Oh! That's it, is it?" says Mr. George with a low whistle as he
sees both grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. "You
are there! Well? What about it? Come, I won't be smothered any
more. Speak!"

"My dear friend," returns the old man, "I was applied--Judy, shake
me up a little!--I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and
my opinion still is that the captain is not dead."

"Bosh!" observes Mr. George.

"What was your remark, my dear friend?" inquires the old man with
his hand to his ear.

"Bosh!"

"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Mr. George, of my opinion you
can judge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and
the reasons given for asking 'em. Now, what do you think the
lawyer making the inquiries wants?"

"A job," says Mr. George.

"Nothing of the kind!"

"Can't be a lawyer, then," says Mr. George, folding his arms with
an air of confirmed resolution.

"My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see
some fragment in Captain Hawdon's writing. He don't want to keep
it. He only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his
possession."

"Well?"

"Well, Mr. George. Happening to remember the advertisement
concerning Captain Hawdon and any information that could be given
respecting him, he looked it up and came to me--just as you did, my
dear friend. WILL you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I
should have missed forming such a friendship if you hadn't come!"

"Well, Mr. Smallweed?" says Mr. George again after going through
the ceremony with some stiffness.

"I had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague
pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him,"
says the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances
of a prayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry
hands, "I have half a million of his signatures, I think! But
you," breathlessly recovering his mildness of speech as Judy re-
adjusts the cap on his skittle-ball of a head, "you, my dear Mr.
George, are likely to have some letter or paper that would suit the
purpose. Anything would suit the purpose, written in the hand."

"Some writing in that hand," says the trooper, pondering; "may be,
I have."

"My dearest friend!"

"May be, I have not."

"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed, crest-fallen.

"But if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make
a cartridge without knowing why."

"Sir, I have told you why. My dear Mr. George, I have told you
why."

"Not enough," says the trooper, shaking his head. "I must know
more, and approve it."

"Then, will you come to the lawyer? My dear friend, will you come
and see the gentleman?" urges Grandfather Smallweed, pulling out a
lean old silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. "I
told him it was probable I might call upon him between ten and
eleven this forenoon, and it's now half after ten. Will you come
and see the gentleman, Mr. George?"

"Hum!" says he gravely. "I don't mind that. Though why this
should concern you so much, I don't know."

"Everything concerns me that has a chance in it of bringing
anything to light about him. Didn't he take us all in? Didn't he
owe us immense sums, all round? Concern me? Who can anything
about him concern more than me? Not, my dear friend," says
Grandfather Smallweed, lowering his tone, "that I want YOU to
betray anything. Far from it. Are you ready to come, my dear
friend?"

"Aye! I'll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know."

"No, my dear Mr. George; no."

"And you mean to say you're going to give me a lift to this place,
wherever it is, without charging for it?" Mr. George inquires,
getting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves.

This pleasantry so tickles Mr. Smallweed that he laughs, long and
low, before the fire. But ever while he laughs, he glances over
his paralytic shoulder at Mr. George and eagerly watches him as he
unlocks the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the
gallery, looks here and there upon the higher shelves, and
ultimately takes something out with a rustling of paper, folds it,
and puts it in his breast. Then Judy pokes Mr. Smallweed once, and
Mr. Smallweed pokes Judy once.

"I am ready," says the trooper, coming back. "Phil, you can carry
this old gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him."

"Oh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!" says Mr. Smallweed. "He's
so very prompt! Are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy
man?"

Phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, sidles
away, tightly bugged by the now speechless Mr. Smallweed, and bolts
along the passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry
the old gentleman to the nearest volcano. His shorter trust,
however, terminating at the cab, he deposits him there; and the
fair Judy takes her place beside him, and the chair embellishes the
roof, and Mr. George takes the vacant place upon the box.

Mr. George is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from
time to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind
him, where the grim Judy is always motionless, and the old
gentleman with his cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat
into the straw and looking upward at him out of his other eye with
a helpless expression of being jolted in the back.

CHAPTER XXVII

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 ceillhg, 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 to be informed that there
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."