Bleak House

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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 resfless 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 intend to, Mat," replies the other. "I would sooner take her
opinion than that of a college."

"College," returns Mr. Bagnet in short sentences, bassoon-like.
"What college could you leave--in another quarter of the world--
with nothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella--to make its way home
to Europe? The old girl would do it to-morrow. Did it once!"

"You are right," says Mr. George.

"What college," pursues Bagnet, "could you set up in life--with two
penn'orth of white lime--a penn'orth of fuller's earth--a ha'porth
of sand--and the rest of the change out of sixpence in money?
That's what the old girl started on. In the present business."

"I am rejoiced to hear it's thriving, Mat."

"The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, acquiescing, "saves. Has a
stocking somewhere. With money in it. I never saw it. But I know
she's got it. Wait till the greens is off her mind. Then she'll
set you up."

"She is a treasure!" exclaims Mr. George.

"She's more. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be
maintained. It was the old girl that brought out my musical
abilities. I should have been in the artillery now but for the old
girl. Six years I hammered at the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The
old girl said it wouldn't do; intention good, but want of
flexibility; try the bassoon. The old girl borrowed a bassoon from
the bandmaster of the Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches.
Got on, got another, get a living by it!"

George remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose and as sound as an
apple.

"The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet in reply, "is a thoroughly fine
woman. Consequently she is like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer
as she gets on. I never saw the old girl's equal. But I never own
to it before her. Discipline must be maintained!"

Proceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and
down the little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by
Quebec and Malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which
Mrs. Bagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. In the
distribution of these comestibles, as in every other household
duty, Mrs. Bagnet developes an exact system, sitting with every
dish before her, allotting to every portion of pork its own portion
of pot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard, and serving it
out complete. Having likewise served out the beer from a can and
thus supplied the mess with all things necessary, Mrs. Bagnet
proceeds to satisfy her own hunger, which is in a healthy state.
The kit of the mess, if the table furniture may be so denominated,
is chiefly composed of utensils of horn and tin that have done duty
in several parts of the world. Young Woolwich's knife, in
particular, which is of the oyster kind, with the additional
feature of a strong shutting-up movement which frequently balks the
appetite of that young musician, is mentioned as having gone in
various hands the complete round of foreign service.

The dinner done, Mrs. Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who
polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all
the dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all
away, first sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr. Bagnet and the
visitor may not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes. These
household cares involve much pattening and counter-pattening in the
backyard and considerable use of a pail, which is finally so happy
as to assist in the ablutions of Mrs. Bagnet herself. That old
girl reappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down to her
needlework, then and only then--the greens being only then to be
considered as entirely off her mind--Mr. Bagnet requests the
trooper to state his case.

This Mr. George does with great discretion, appearing to address
himself to Mr. Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all
the time, as Bagnet has himself. She, equally discreet, busies
herself with her needlework. The case fully stated, Mr. Bagnet
resorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of discipline.

"That's the whole of it, is it, George?" says he.

"That's the whole of it."

"You act according to my opinion?"

"I shall be guided," replies George, "entirely by it."

"Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "give him my opinion. You know it.
Tell him what it is."

It is that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too
deep for him and cannot be too careful of interference with matters
he does not understand--that the plain rule is to do nothing in the
dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never
to put his foot where he cannot see the ground. This, in effect,
is Mr. Bagnet's opinion, as delivered through the old girl, and it
so relieves Mr. George's mind by confirming his own opinion and
banishing his doubts that he composes himself to smoke another pipe
on that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old times with
the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of
experience.

Through these means it comes to pass that Mr. George does not again
rise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing
on when the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at
the theatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr. George, in his
domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and
insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with
felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. George
again turns his face towards Lincoln's Inn Fields.

"A family home," he ruminates as he marches along, "however small
it is, makes a man like me look lonely. But it's well I never made
that evolution of matrimony. I shouldn't have been fit for it. I
am such a vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I
couldn't hold to the gallery a month together if it was a regular
pursuit or if I didn't camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I
disgrace nobody and cumber nobody; that's something. I have not
done that for many a long year!"

So he whistles it off and marches on.

Arrived in Lincoln's Inn Fields and mounting Mr. Tulkinghorn's
stair, he finds the outer door closed and the chambers shut, but
the trooper not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase
being dark besides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to
discover a bell-handle or to open the door for himself, when Mr.
Tulkinghorn comes up the stairs (quietly, of course) and angrily
asks, "Who is that? What are you doing there?"

"I ask your pardon, sir. It's George. The sergeant."

"And couldn't George, the sergeant, see that my door was locked?"

"Why, no, sir, I couldn't. At any rate, I didn't," says the
trooper, rather nettled.

"Have you changed your mind? Or are you in the same mind?" Mr.
Tulkinghorn demands. But he knows well enough at a glance.

"In the same mind, sir."

"I thought so. That's sufficient. You can go. So you are the
man," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, "in
whose hiding-place Mr. Gridley was found?"

"Yes, I AM the man," says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs
down. "What then, sir?"

"What then? I don't like your associates. You should not have
seen the inside of my door this morning if I had thought of your
being that man. Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous
fellow."

With these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the
lawyer goes into his rooms and shuts the door with a thundering
noise.

Mr. George takes his dismissal in great dudgeon, the greater
because a clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of
all and evidently applies them to him. "A pretty character to
bear," the trooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides
downstairs. "A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!" And
looking up, he sees the clerk looking down at him and marking him
as he passes a lamp. This so intensifies his dudgeon that for five
minutes he is in an ill humour. But he whistles that off like the
rest of it and marches home to the shooting gallery.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The Ironmaster

Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for the time being, of
the family gout and is once more, in a literal no less than in a
figurative point of view, upon his legs. He is at his place in
Lincolnshire; but the waters are out again on the low-lying
grounds, and the cold and damp steal into Chesney Wold, though well
defended, and eke into Sir Leicester's bones. The blazing fires of
faggot and coal--Dedlock timber and antediluvian forest--that blaze
upon the broad wide hearths and wink in the twilight on the
frowning woods, sullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not
exclude the enemy. The hot-water pipes that trail themselves all
over the house, the cushioned doors and windows, and the screens
and curtains fail to supply the fires' deficiencies and to satisfy
Sir Leicester's need. Hence the fashionable intelligence proclaims
one morning to the listening earth that Lady Dedlock is expected
shortly to return to town for a few weeks.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor
relations. Indeed great men have often more than their fair share
of poor relations, inasmuch as very red blood of the superior
quality, like inferior blood unlawfully shed, WILL cry aloud and
WILL be heard. Sir Leicester's cousins, in the remotest degree,
are so many murders in the respect that they "will out." Among
whom there are cousins who are so poor that one might almost dare
to think it would have been the happier for them never to have been
plated links upon the Dedlock chain of gold, but to have been made
of common iron at first and done base service.

Service, however (with a few limited reservations, genteel but not
profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So
they visit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can,
and live but shabbily when they can't, and find--the women no
husbands, and the men no wives--and ride in borrowed carriages, and
sit at feasts that are never of their own making, and so go through
high life. The rich family sum has been divided by so many
figures, and they are the something over that nobody knows what to
do with.

Everybody on Sir Leicester Dedlock's side of the question and of
his way of thinking would appear to be his cousin more or less.
From my Lord Boodle, through the Duke of Foodle, down to Noodle,
Sir Leicester, like a glorious spider, stretches his threads of
relationship. But while he is stately in the cousinship of the
Everybodys, he is a kind and generous man, according to his
dignified way, in the cousinship of the Nobodys; and at the present
time, in despite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several
such cousins at Chesney Wold with the constancy of a martyr.

Of these, foremost in the front rank stands Volumnia Dedlock, a
young lady (of sixty) who is doubly highly related, having the
honour to be a poor relation, by the mother's side, to another
great family. Miss Volumnia, displaying in early life a pretty
talent for cutting ornaments out of coloured paper, and also for
singing to the guitar in the Spanish tongue, and propounding French
conundrums in country houses, passed the twenty years of her
existence between twenty and forty in a sufficiently agreeable
manner. Lapsing then out of date and being considered to bore
mankind by her vocal performances in the Spanish language, she
retired to Bath, where she lives slenderly on an annual present
from Sir Leicester and whence she makes occasional resurrections in
the country houses of her cousins. She has an extensive
acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with thin legs
and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that dreary city.
But she is a little dreaded elsewhere in consequence of an
indiscreet profusion in the article of rouge and persistency in an
obsolete pearl necklace like a rosary of little bird's-eggs.

In any country in a wholesome state, Volumnia would be a clear case
for the pension list. Efforts have been made to get her on it, and
when William Buffy came in, it was fully expected that her name
would be put down for a couple of hundred a year. But William
Buffy somehow discovered, contrary to all expectation, that these
were not the times when it could be done, and this was the first
clear indication Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the
country was going to pieces.

There is likewise the Honourable Bob Stables, who can make warm
mashes with the skill of a veterinary surgeon and is a better shot
than most gamekeepers. He has been for some time particularly
desirous to serve his country in a post of good emoluments,
unaccompanied by any trouble or responsibility. In a well-
regulated body politic this natural desire on the part of a
spirited young gentleman so highly connected would be speedily
recognized, but somehow William Buffy found when he came in that
these were not times in which he could manage that little matter
either, and this was the second indication Sir Leicester Dedlock
had conveyed to him that the country was going to pieces.

The rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlemen of various ages
and capacities, the major part amiable and sensible and likely to
have done well enough in life if they could have overcome their
cousinship; as it is, they are almost all a little worsted by it,
and lounge in purposeless and listless paths, and seem to be quite
as much at a loss how to dispose of themselves as anybody else can
be how to dispose of them.

In this society, and where not, my Lady Dedlock reigns supreme.
Beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world
(for the world of fashion does not stretch ALL the way from pole to
pole), her influence in Sir Leicester's house, however haughty and
indifferent her manner, is greatly to improve it and refine it.
The cousins, even those older cousins who were paralysed when Sir
Leicester married her, do her feudal homage; and the Honourable Bob
Stables daily repeats to some chosen person between breakfast and
lunch his favourite original remark, that she is the best-groomed
woman in the whole stud.

Such the guests in the long drawing-room at Chesney Wold this
dismal night when the step on the Ghost's Walk (inaudible here,
however) might be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the
cold. It is near bed-time. Bedroom fires blaze brightly all over
the house, raising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling.
Bedroom candlesticks bristle on the distant table by the door, and
cousins yawn on ottomans. Cousins at the piano, cousins at the
soda-water tray, cousins rising from the card-table, cousins
gathered round the fire. Standing on one side of his own peculiar
fire (for there are two), Sir Leicester. On the opposite side of
the broad hearth, my Lady at her table. Volumnia, as one of the
more privileged cousins, in a luxurious chair between them. Sir
Leicester glancing, with magnificent displeasure, at the rouge and
the pearl necklace.