“Now, what,” says Mr. George, “may this be? Is it blank cartridge or ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?”

An open letter is the subject of the trooper’s speculations, and it seems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm’s length, brings it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his left hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on that side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot satisfy himself. He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy palm, and thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a halt before it every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye. Even that won’t do. “Is it,” Mr. George still muses, “blank cartridge or ball?”

Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march time and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back again to the girl he left behind him.

“Phil!” The trooper beckons as he calls him.

Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he were going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander like a bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high relief upon his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of the brush.

“Attention, Phil! Listen to this.”

“Steady, commander, steady.”

“‘Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months’ date drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.’ What do you make of that, Phil?”

“Mischief, guv’ner.”

“Why?”

“I think,” replies Phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle in his forehead with the brush-handle, “that mischeevious consequences is always meant when money’s asked for.”

“Lookye, Phil,” says the trooper, sitting on the table. “First and last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal in interest and one thing and another.”

Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the transaction as being made more promising by this incident.

“And lookye further, Phil,” says the trooper, staying his premature conclusions with a wave of his hand. “There has always been an understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And it has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?”

“I say that I think the times is come to a end at last.”

“You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself.”

“Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?”

“The same.”

“Guv’ner,” says Phil with exceeding gravity, “he’s a leech in his dispositions, he’s a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his twistings, and a lobster in his claws.”

Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he has in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical medium that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady. George, having folded the letter, walks in that direction.

“There IS a way, commander,” says Phil, looking cunningly at him, “of settling this.”

“Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could.”

Phil shakes his head. “No, guv’ner, no; not so bad as that. There IS a way,” says Phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush; “what I’m a-doing at present.”

“Whitewashing.”

Phil nods.

“A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my old scores? YOU’RE a moral character,” says the trooper, eyeing him in his large way with no small indignation; “upon my life you are, Phil!”

Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb, that he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so much as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy family when steps are audible in the long passage without, and a cheerful voice is heard to wonder whether George is at home. Phil, with a look at his master, hobbles up, saying, “Here’s the guv’ner, Mrs. Bagnet! Here he is!” and the old girl herself, accompanied by Mr. Bagnet, appears.

The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so interesting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe from another quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and an umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a part of the old girl’s presence out of doors. It is of no colour known in this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, with a metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a little model of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval glasses out of a pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has not that tenacious capacity of sticking to its post that might be desired in an article long associated with the British army. The old girl’s umbrella is of a flabby habit of waist and seems to be in need of stays—an appearance that is possibly referable to its having served through a series of years at home as a cupboard and on journeys as a carpet bag. She never puts it up, having the greatest reliance on her well-proved cloak with its capacious hood, but generally uses the instrument as a wand with which to point out joints of meat or bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the attention of tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-basket, which is a sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she never stirs abroad. Attended by these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, Mrs. Bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright, in George’s Shooting Gallery.

“Well, George, old fellow,” says she, “and how do YOU do, this sunshiny morning?”

Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench, unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms, and looks perfectly comfortable.

Mr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade 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 not 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, con-found 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 what you wanted of me the other day.”

“Have you got it here?”

“I have got it here, sir.”

“Sergeant,” the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence, “make up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won’t re-open it. Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you have brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you choose. In case you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you—I can replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you decided?”

The trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long breath, “I must do it, sir.”

So Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express his sentiments. The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a folded paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer’s elbow. “‘Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever had from him.”

Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression, and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr. Tulkinghorn when he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and lays it in his desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death.

Nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, “You can go. Show these men out, there!” Being shown out, they repair to Mr. Bagnet’s residence to dine.

Boiled beef and greens constitute the day’s variety on the former repast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the meal in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being that rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her. The spot on this occasion is the darkened brow of Mr. George; he is unusually thoughtful and depressed. At first Mrs. Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments of Quebec and Malta to restore him, but finding those young ladies sensible that their existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their usual frolicsome acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and leaves him to deploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth.

But he does not. He remains in close order, clouded and depressed. During the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and Mr. Bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he was at dinner. He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his pipe out, fills the breast of Mr. Bagnet with perturbation and dismay by showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco.

Therefore when Mrs. Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr. Bagnet growls, “Old girl!” and winks monitions to her to find out what’s the matter.

“Why, George!” says Mrs. Bagnet, quietly threading her needle. “How low you are!”

“Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not.”

“He ain’t at all like Bluffy, mother!” cries little Malta.

“Because he ain’t well, I think, mother,” adds Quebec.

“Sure that’s a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!” returns the trooper, kissing the young damsels. “But it’s true,” with a sigh, “true, I am afraid. These little ones are always right!”

“George,” says Mrs. Bagnet, working busily, “if I thought you cross enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier’s wife—who could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done it almost—said this morning, I don’t know what I shouldn’t say to you now.”

“My kind soul of a darling,” returns the trooper. “Not a morsel of it.”

“Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say was that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you’d bring him through it. And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!”

“Thankee, my dear!” says George. “I am glad of your good opinion.”

In giving Mrs. Bagnet’s hand, with her work in it, a friendly shake—for she took her seat beside him—the trooper’s attention is attracted to her face. After looking at it for a little while as she plies her needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his stool in the corner, and beckons that fifer to him.

“See there, my boy,” says George, very gently smoothing the mother’s hair with his hand, “there’s a good loving forehead for you! All bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the weather through following your father about and taking care of you, but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree.”

Mr. Bagnet’s face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies, the highest approbation and acquiescence.

“The time will come, my boy,” pursues the trooper, “when this hair of your mother’s will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she’ll be then. Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, ‘I never whitened a hair of her dear head—I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!’ For of all the many things that you can think of when you are a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!”

Mr. George concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy beside his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry about him, that he’ll smoke his pipe in the street a bit.

Librivox Recording: Chapter 34

(Image: “Mr. Smallweed Breaks the Pipe of Peace”)

Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons who attended the last coroner’s inquest at the Sol’s Arms reappear in the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol’s parlour, and write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits, far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be recollected was held on that occasion at the Sol’s Arms, a well-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question on the west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr. James George Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible) how during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical occurrence which forms the subject of that present account transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr. Swills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby, has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M. Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called Harmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at the Sol’s Arms under Mr. Bogsby’s direction pursuant to the Act of George the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression at the time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he hadn’t a single note in him. How this account of Mr. Swills is entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in the same court and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook, the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy catastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol’s Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about it.

The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night, and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the ill-fated house, and look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a bed at the Sol’s Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts its door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for the Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The house has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy heard what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his shoulders and said, “There’ll be a run upon us!” In the first outcry, young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in triumph at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and holding on to that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and torches. One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all chinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in company with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in charge thereof. To this trio everybody in the court possessed of sixpence has an insatiate desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid form.

Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are within the bar at the Sol and are worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they will only stay there. “This is not a time,” says Mr. Bogsby, “to haggle about money,” though he looks something sharply after it, over the counter; “give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you’re welcome to whatever you put a name to.”

Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile, one or other of the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing it open a little way at the full length of his arm, looks in from outer gloom. Not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as well know what they are up to in there.

Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated, still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little money left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with slow-retreating steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire that have aspired to lessen the darkness. Thus the day cometh, whether or no.

And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do to keep the door.

“Good gracious, gentlemen!” says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. “What’s this I hear!”

“Why, it’s true,” returns one of the policemen. “That’s what it is. Now move on here, come!”

“Why, good gracious, gentlemen,” says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat promptly backed away, “I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven o’clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here.”

“Indeed?” returns the policeman. “You will find the young man next door then. Now move on here, some of you.”

“Not hurt, I hope?” says Mr. Snagsby.

“Hurt? No. What’s to hurt him!”

Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his troubled mind, repairs to the Sol’s Arms and finds Mr. Weevle languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.

“And Mr. Guppy likewise!” quoth Mr. Snagsby. “Dear, dear, dear! What a fate there seems in all this! And my lit—”

Mr. Snagsby’s power of speech deserts him in the formation of the words “my little woman.” For to see that injured female walk into the Sol’s Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit, strikes him dumb.

“My dear,” says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, “will you take anything? A little—not to put too fine a point upon it—drop of shrub?”

“No,” says Mrs. Snagsby.

“My love, you know these two gentlemen?”

“Yes!” says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye.

The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs. Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.

“My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don’t do it.”

“I can’t help my looks,” says Mrs. Snagsby, “and if I could I wouldn’t.”

Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, “Wouldn’t you really, my dear?” and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble and says, “This is a dreadful mystery, my love!” still fearfully disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby’s eye.

“It IS,” returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, “a dreadful mystery.”

“My little woman,” urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, “don’t for goodness’ sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good Lord, you don’t suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any person, my dear?”

“I can’t say,” returns Mrs. Snagsby.

On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby “can’t say” either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have had something to do with it. He has had something—he don’t know what—to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his handkerchief and gasps.

“My life,” says the unhappy stationer, “would you have any objections to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?”

“Why do YOU come here?” inquires Mrs. Snagsby.

“My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has happened to the venerable party who has been—combusted.” Mr. Snagsby has made a pause to suppress a groan. “I should then have related them to you, my love, over your French roll.”

“I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby.”

“Every—my lit—”

“I should be glad,” says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, “if you would come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than anywhere else.”

“My love, I don’t know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to go.”

Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs. Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby from the Sol’s Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs. Snagsby’s pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.

Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into Lincoln’s Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.

“There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony,” says Mr. Guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the square, “for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must, with very little delay, come to an understanding.”

“Now, I tell you what, William G.!” returns the other, eyeing his companion with a bloodshot eye. “If it’s a point of conspiracy, you needn’t take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that, and I ain’t going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking fire next or blowing up with a bang.”

This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, “Tony, I should have thought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived.” To which Mr. Weevle returns, “William, I should have thought it would have been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you lived.” To which Mr. Guppy says, “Who’s conspiring?” To which Mr. Jobling replies, “Why, YOU are!” To which Mr. Guppy retorts, “No, I am not.” To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, “Yes, you are!” To which Mr. Guppy retorts, “Who says so?” To which Mr. Jobling retorts, “I say so!” To which Mr. Guppy retorts, “Oh, indeed?” To which Mr. Jobling retorts, “Yes, indeed!” And both being now in a heated state, they walk on silently for a while to cool down again.

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy then, “if you heard your friend out instead of flying at him, you wouldn’t fall into mistakes. But your temper is hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all that is calculated to charm the eye—”

“Oh! Blow the eye!” cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. “Say what you have got to say!”

Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of injury in which he recommences, “Tony, when I say there is a point on which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the death of this unfortunate old mo—gentleman?” (Mr. Guppy was going to say “mogul,” but thinks “gentleman” better suited to the circumstances.)

“What facts? THE facts.”

“The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are”—Mr. Guppy tells them off on his fingers—”what we knew of his habits, when you saw him last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and how we made it.”

“Yes,” says Mr. Weevle. “Those are about the facts.”

“We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric way, an appointment with you at twelve o’clock at night, when you were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with you, was called down—and so forth. The inquiry being only into the circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it’s not necessary to go beyond these facts, I suppose you’ll agree?”

“No!” returns Mr. Weevle. “I suppose not.”

“And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?” says the injured Guppy.

“No,” returns his friend; “if it’s nothing worse than this, I withdraw the observation.”

“Now, Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him slowly on, “I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?”

“What do you mean?” says Tony, stopping.

“Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?” repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him on again.

“At what place? THAT place?” pointing in the direction of the rag and bottle shop.

Mr. Guppy nods.

“Why, I wouldn’t pass another night there for any consideration that you could offer me,” says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.

“Do you mean it though, Tony?”

“Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that,” says Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.

“Then the possibility or probability—for such it must be considered—of your never being disturbed in possession of those effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find out what he really had got stored up there, don’t weigh with you at all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?” says Mr. Guppy, biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.

“Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow’s living there?” cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. “Go and live there yourself.”

“Oh! I, Tony!” says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. “I have never lived there and couldn’t get a lodging there now, whereas you have got one.”

“You are welcome to it,” rejoins his friend, “and—ugh!—you may make yourself at home in it.”

“Then you really and truly at this point,” says Mr. Guppy, “give up the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?”

“You never,” returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness, “said a truer word in all your life. I do!”

While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square, on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach stops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs. Smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter Judy.

An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, “How de do, sir! How de do!”

“What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning, I wonder!” says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.

“My dear sir,” cries Grandfather Smallweed, “would you do me a favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn, sir?”

Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, “The public-house in the court?” And they prepare to bear the venerable burden to the Sol’s Arms.

“There’s your fare!” says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. “Ask me for a penny more, and I’ll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won’t squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones!”

It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, he fulfils his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman is deposited by his own desire in the parlour of the Sol’s Arms.

“Oh, Lord!” gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from an arm-chair. “Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling poll-parrot! Sit down!”

This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds herself on her feet to amble about and “set” to inanimate objects, accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A nervous affection has probably as much to do with these demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Smallweed is seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with great volubility, the endearing epithet of “a pig-headed jackdaw,” repeated a surprising number of times.

“My dear sir,” Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr. Guppy, “there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either of you?”

“Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it.”

“You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it!”

The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the compliment.

“My dear friends,” whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his hands, “I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed’s brother.”

“Eh?” says Mr. Guppy.

“Mrs. Smallweed’s brother, my dear friend—her only relation. We were not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric—he was very eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I have come down,” repeats Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air towards him with all his ten fingers at once, “to look after the property.”

“I think, Small,” says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, “you might have mentioned that the old man was your uncle.”

“You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to be the same,” returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye. “Besides, I wasn’t proud of him.”

“Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or not,” says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.

“He never saw me in his life to know me,” observed Small; “I don’t know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!”

“No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored,” the old gentleman strikes in, “but I have come to look after the property—to look over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as my solicitor; and grass don’t grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye. Krook was Mrs. Smallweed’s only brother; she had no relation but Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. I am speaking of your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years of age.”

Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up, “Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of bank-notes!”

“Will somebody give me a quart pot?” exclaims her exasperated husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within his reach. “Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker!” Here Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Judy at her grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping into his chair in a heap.

“Shake me up, somebody, if you’ll be so good,” says the voice from within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. “I have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch the property!” As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and putting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and punching, he still repeats like an echo, “The—the property! The property! Property!”

Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet. But there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn’s clerk comes down from his official pew in the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due time and course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next house and upstairs into Miss Flite’s deserted room, where he looks like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.

The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up “The popular song of King Death, with chorus by the whole strength of the company,” as the great Harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill that “J. G. B. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in consequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the bar by a large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a late melancholy event which has aroused so much sensation.” There is one point connected with the deceased upon which the court is particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the undertaker’s stating in the Sol’s bar in the course of the day that he has received orders to construct “a six-footer,” the general solicitude is much relieved, and it is considered that Mr. Smallweed’s conduct does him great honour.

Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Philosophical Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on English medical jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who WOULD investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a case occurred and even to write an account of it—still they regard the late Mr. Krook’s obstinacy in going out of the world by any such by-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol’s Arms. Then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester, and in Mrs. Perkins’ own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws in upon the block Mr. Krook’s house, as large as life; in fact, considerably larger, making a very temple of it. Similarly, being permitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high, at which the court is particularly charmed. All this time the two gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and assist at the philosophical disputations—go everywhere and listen to everybody—and yet are always diving into the Sol’s parlour and writing with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.

At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that “that would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can’t account for!” After which the six-footer comes into action and is much admired.

In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except when he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual and can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has the mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking the door, and of bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that must be said to Lady Dedlock.

For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol’s Arms have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents himself at the town mansion at about seven o’clock in the evening and requests to see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner; don’t he see the carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage at the door; but he wants to see my Lady too.

Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a fellow-gentleman in waiting, “to pitch into the young man”; but his instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the young man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.

Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it—? No, it’s no ghost, but fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed.

“I have to beg your ladyship’s pardon,” Mr. Guppy stammers, very downcast. “This is an inconvenienttime—”

“I told you, you could come at any time.” She takes a chair, looking straight at him as on the last occasion.

“Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable.”

“You can sit down.” There is not much affability in her tone.

“I don’t know, your ladyship, that it’s worth while my sitting down and detaining you, for I—I have not got the letters that I mentioned when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship.”

“Have you come merely to say so?”

“Merely to say so, your ladyship.” Mr. Guppy besides being depressed, disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the splendour and beauty of her appearance.

She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a grain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and further from her.

She will not speak, it is plain. So he must.

“In short, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent thief, “the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a sudden end, and—” He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the sentence.

“And the letters are destroyed with the person?”

Mr. Guppy would say no if he could—as he is unable to hide.

“I believe so, your ladyship.”

If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it.

He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.

“Is this all you have to say?” inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard him out—or as nearly out as he can stumble.

Mr. Guppy thinks that’s all.

“You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this being the last time you will have the opportunity.”

Mr. Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present, by any means.

“That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!” And she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Guppy out.

But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the handle of the door—comes in—and comes face to face with the young man as he is leaving the room.

One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the blind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks out. Another instant, close again.

“I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times. It is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the room was empty. I beg your pardon!”

“Stay!” She negligently calls him back. “Remain here, I beg. I am going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!”

The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes that Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.

“Aye, aye?” says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent brows, though he has no need to look again—not he. “From Kenge and Carboy’s, surely?”

“Kenge and Carboy’s, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir.”

“To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!”

“Happy to hear it, sir. You can’t be too well, sir, for the credit of the profession.”

“Thank you, Mr. Guppy!”

Mr. Guppy sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his old-fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock’s brightness, hands her down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening.

Librivox Recording: Chapter 33

(Image: “The old man of the name of Tulkinghorn”)

It is night in Lincoln’s Inn—perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day—and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine o’clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give, for every day, some good account at last.

In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of passengers—Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and the fact of Mr. Krook’s being “continually in liquor,” and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the Harmonic Meeting at the Sol’s Arms, where the sound of the piano through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to “Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!” Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window, Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren, and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol’s Arms every night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments. “Sooner than which, myself,” says Mrs. Perkins, “I would get my living by selling lucifers.” Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs. Perkins’) respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol’s Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs. Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too, the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is either robbing or being robbed.

It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the air—there is plenty in it—or it may be something in himself that is in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night, Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than before.

It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what seems to be its fountain-head—the rag and bottle shop in the court. It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by the Sol’s Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes’ long from his own door and back again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.

“What, Mr. Weevle?” says the stationer, stopping to speak. “Are YOU there?”

“Aye!” says Weevle, “Here I am, Mr. Snagsby.”

“Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?” the stationer inquires.

“Why, there’s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening,” Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.

“Very true, sir. Don’t you observe,” says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to sniff and taste the air a little, “don’t you observe, Mr. Weevle, that you’re—not to put too fine a point upon it—that you’re rather greasy here, sir?”

“Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the place to-night,” Mr. Weevle rejoins. “I suppose it’s chops at the Sol’s Arms.”

“Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?” Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again. “Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning ’em, sir! And I don’t think”—Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then spits and wipes his mouth—”I don’t think—not to put too fine a point upon it—that they were quite fresh when they were shown the gridiron.”

“That’s very likely. It’s a tainting sort of weather.”

“It IS a tainting sort of weather,” says Mr. Snagsby, “and I find it sinking to the spirits.”

“By George! I find it gives me the horrors,” returns Mr. Weevle.

“Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room, with a black circumstance hanging over it,” says Mr. Snagsby, looking in past the other’s shoulder along the dark passage and then falling back a step to look up at the house. “I couldn’t live in that room alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and stand here sooner than sit there. But then it’s very true that you didn’t see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference.”

“I know quite enough about it,” returns Tony.

“It’s not agreeable, is it?” pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. “Mr. Krook ought to consider it in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.”

“I hope he does,” says Tony. “But I doubt it.”

“You find the rent too high, do you, sir?” returns the stationer. “Rents ARE high about here. I don’t know how it is exactly, but the law seems to put things up in price. Not,” adds Mr. Snagsby with his apologetic cough, “that I mean to say a word against the profession I get my living by.”

Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his way out of this conversation.

“It’s a curious fact, sir,” he observes, slowly rubbing his hands, “that he should have been—”

“Who’s he?” interrupts Mr. Weevle.

“The deceased, you know,” says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on the button.

“Ah, to be sure!” returns the other as if he were not over-fond of the subject. “I thought we had done with him.”

“I was only going to say it’s a curious fact, sir, that he should have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,” says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, “because I have known writers that have gone into brewers’ houses and done really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir,” adds Mr. Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.

“It’s a curious coincidence, as you say,” answers Weevle, once more glancing up and down the court.

“Seems a fate in it, don’t there?” suggests the stationer.

“There does.”

“Just so,” observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. “Quite a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid you good night”—Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since he stopped to speak—”my little woman will be looking for me else. Good night, sir!”

If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol’s Arms all this time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching glance as she goes past.

“You’ll know me again, ma’am, at all events,” says Mr. Weevle to himself; “and I can’t compliment you on your appearance, whoever you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER coming!”

This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door. Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they speak low.

“I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here,” says Tony.

“Why, I said about ten.”

“You said about ten,” Tony repeats. “Yes, so you did say about ten. But according to my count, it’s ten times ten—it’s a hundred o’clock. I never had such a night in my life!”

“What has been the matter?”

“That’s it!” says Tony. “Nothing has been the matter. But here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE’S a blessed-looking candle!” says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.

“That’s easily improved,” Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the snuffers in hand.

“IS it?” returns his friend. “Not so easily as you think. It has been smouldering like that ever since it was lighted.”

“Why, what’s the matter with you, Tony?” inquires Mr. Guppy, looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the table.

“William Guppy,” replies the other, “I am in the downs. It’s this unbearably dull, suicidal room—and old Boguey downstairs, I suppose.” Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender, and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy attitude.

“Wasn’t that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?”

“Yes, and he—yes, it was Snagsby,” said Mr. Weevle, altering the construction of his sentence.

“On business?”

“No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose.”

“I thought it was Snagsby,” says Mr. Guppy, “and thought it as well that he shouldn’t see me, so I waited till he was gone.”

“There we go again, William G.!” cried Tony, looking up for an instant. “So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to commit a murder, we couldn’t have more mystery about it!”

Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.

“That’s very like Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Guppy. “It’s a speaking likeness.”

“I wish it was,” growls Tony, without changing his position. “I should have some fashionable conversation, here, then.”

Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and remonstrates with him.

“Tony,” says he, “I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his ‘eart. But there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.”

“This is strong language, William Guppy,” returns Mr. Weevle.

“Sir, it may be,” retorts Mr. William Guppy, “but I feel strongly when I use it.”

Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured remonstrance.

“No! Dash it, Tony,” says that gentleman, “you really ought to be careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his ‘eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the taste. It is not—happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I could say the same—it is not your character to hover around one flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!”

Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying emphatically, “William Guppy, drop it!” Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with the reply, “I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord.”

“And now,” says Tony, stirring the fire, “touching this same bundle of letters. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have appointed twelve o’clock to-night to hand ’em over to me?”

“Very. What did he do it for?”

“What does he do anything for? HE don’t know. Said to-day was his birthday and he’d hand ’em over to-night at twelve o’clock. He’ll have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day.”

“He hasn’t forgotten the appointment, I hope?”

“Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him to-night, about eight—helped him to shut up his shop—and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed ’em me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming like the wind, the only song he knows—about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole.”

“And you are to go down at twelve?”

“At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a hundred.”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs crossed, “he can’t read yet, can he?”

“Read! He’ll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on that much, under me; but he can’t put them together. He’s too old to acquire the knack of it now—and too drunk.”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, “how do you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?”

“He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and asked me what it meant.”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again, “should you say that the original was a man’s writing or a woman’s?”

“A woman’s. Fifty to one a lady’s—slopes a good deal, and the end of the letter ‘n,’ long and hasty.”

Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue, generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.

“Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is there a chimney on fire?”

“Chimney on fire!”

“Ah!” returns Mr. Guppy. “See how the soot’s falling. See here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won’t blow off—smears like black fat!”

They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says it’s all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol’s Arms.

“And it was then,” resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads very near together, “that he told you of his having taken the bundle of letters from his lodger’s portmanteau?”

“That was the time, sir,” answers Tony, faintly adjusting his whiskers. “Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots.”

The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.

“You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That’s the arrangement, isn’t it, Tony?” asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting his thumb-nail.

“You can’t speak too low. Yes. That’s what he and I agreed.”

“I tell you what, Tony—”

“You can’t speak too low,” says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.

“I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one while it’s in my possession, you can show him the dummy.”

“And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely than not,” suggests Tony.

“Then we’ll face it out. They don’t belong to him, and they never did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands—a legal friend of yours—for security. If he forces us to it, they’ll be producible, won’t they?”

“Ye-es,” is Mr. Weevle’s reluctant admission.

“Why, Tony,” remonstrates his friend, “how you look! You don’t doubt William Guppy? You don’t suspect any harm?”

“I don’t suspect anything more than I know, William,” returns the other gravely.

“And what do you know?” urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little; but on his friend’s once more warning him, “I tell you, you can’t speak too low,” he repeats his question without any sound at all, forming with his lips only the words, “What do you know?”

“I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in secrecy, a pair of conspirators.”

“Well!” says Mr. Guppy. “And we had better be that than a pair of noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it’s the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?”

“Secondly, it’s not made out to me how it’s likely to be profitable, after all.”

Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf and replies, “Tony, you are asked to leave that to the honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that friend in those chords of the human mind which—which need not be called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion—your friend is no fool. What’s that?”

“It’s eleven o’clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul’s. Listen and you’ll hear all the bells in the city jangling.”

Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant, resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound—strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one consent to see that the door is shut.

“Yes, Tony?” says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting his unsteady thumb-nail. “You were going to say, thirdly?”

“It’s far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it.”

“But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony.”

“May be not, still I don’t like it. Live here by yourself and see how YOU like it.”

“As to dead men, Tony,” proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal, “there have been dead men in most rooms.”

“I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and—and they let you alone,” Tony answers.

The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by stirring the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been stirred instead.

“Fah! Here’s more of this hateful soot hanging about,” says he. “Let us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It’s too close.”

He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy tone.

“By the by, Tony, don’t forget old Smallweed,” meaning the younger of that name. “I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family.”

“I remember,” says Tony. “I am up to all that.”

“And as to Krook,” resumes Mr. Guppy. “Now, do you suppose he really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to you, since you have been such allies?”

Tony shakes his head. “I don’t know. Can’t Imagine. If we get through this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don’t know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It’s a monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should judge, from what he tells me.”

“How did he first come by that idea, though? That’s the question,” Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic meditation. “He may have found papers in something he bought, where papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are worth something.”

“Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got, and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor’s Court and hearing of documents for ever,” returns Mr. Weevle.

Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily draws his hand away.

“What, in the devil’s name,” he says, “is this! Look at my fingers!”

A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.

“What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of window?”

“I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been here!” cries the lodger.

And yet look here—and look here! When he brings the candle here, from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.

“This is a horrible house,” says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window. “Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off.”

He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood silently before the fire when Saint Paul’s bell strikes twelve and all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet again, the lodger says, “It’s the appointed time at last. Shall I go?”

Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a “lucky touch” on the back, but not with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.

He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before the fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.

“Have you got them?”

“Got them! No. The old man’s not there.”

He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly, “What’s the matter?”

“I couldn’t make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there—and the soot is there, and the oil is there—and he is not there!” Tony ends this with a groan.

Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as usual. On one chair-back hang the old man’s hairy cap and coat.

“Look!” whispers the lodger, pointing his friend’s attention to these objects with a trembling finger. “I told you so. When I saw him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair—his coat was there already, for he had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up—and I left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor.”

Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.

“See!” whispers Tony. “At the foot of the same chair there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it fall.”

“What’s the matter with the cat?” says Mr. Guppy. “Look at her!”

“Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place.”

They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the light.

Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is—is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him.

Help, help, help! Come into this house for heaven’s sake! Plenty will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally—inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only—spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died.

Librivox Recording: Chapter 32

(Image: “The Appointed Time”)

I had not been at home again many days when one evening I went upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley’s shoulder and see how she was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen, but in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated, and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into corners like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters Charley’s young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and tottering, it so plump and round. Yet Charley was uncommonly expert at other things and had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.

“Well, Charley,” said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in which it was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed in all kinds of ways, “we are improving. If we only get to make it round, we shall be perfect, Charley.”

Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen wouldn’t join Charley’s neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.

“Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time.”

Charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished, opened and shut her cramped little hand, looked gravely at the page, half in pride and half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy.

“Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor person of the name of Jenny?”

“A brickmaker’s wife, Charley? Yes.”

“She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and said you knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn’t the young lady’s little maid—meaning you for the young lady, miss—and I said yes, miss.”

“I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Charley.”

“So she had, miss, but she’s come back again to where she used to live—she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the name of Liz, miss?”

“I think I do, Charley, though not by name.”

“That’s what she said!” returned Charley. “They have both come back, miss, and have been tramping high and low.”

“Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?”

“Yes, miss.” If Charley could only have made the letters in her copy as round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they would have been excellent. “And this poor person came about the house three or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss—all she wanted, she said—but you were away. That was when she saw me. She saw me a-going about, miss,” said Charley with a short laugh of the greatest delight and pride, “and she thought I looked like your maid!”

“Did she though, really, Charley?”

“Yes, miss!” said Charley. “Really and truly.” And Charley, with another short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round again and looked as serious as became my maid. I was never tired of seeing Charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity, standing before me with her youthful face and figure, and her steady manner, and her childish exultation breaking through it now and then in the pleasantest way.

“And where did you see her, Charley?” said I.

My little maid’s countenance fell as she replied, “By the doctor’s shop, miss.” For Charley wore her black frock yet.

I asked if the brickmaker’s wife were ill, but Charley said no. It was some one else. Some one in her cottage who had tramped down to Saint Albans and was tramping he didn’t know where. A poor boy, Charley said. No father, no mother, no any one. “Like as Tom might have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father,” said Charley, her round eyes filling with tears.

“And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?”

“She said, miss,” returned Charley, “how that he had once done as much for her.”

My little maid’s face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great difficulty in reading her thoughts. “Well, Charley,” said I, “it appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to Jenny’s and see what’s the matter.”

The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her readiness. So Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went out.

It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. The rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission for many days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had partly cleared, but was very gloomy—even above us, where a few stars were shining. In the north and north-west, where the sun had set three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards London a lurid glare overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was as solemn as might be.

I had no thought that night—none, I am quite sure—of what was soon to happen to me. But I have always remembered since that when we had stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then and there that I had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with that spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.

It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place where we were going were drinking elsewhere. We found it quieter than I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable. The kilns were burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare.

We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the patched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. The place was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar smell.

I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was at the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly and stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.

His action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident that I stood still instead of advancing nearer.

“I won’t go no more to the berryin ground,” muttered the boy; “I ain’t a-going there, so I tell you!”

I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low voice, “Don’t mind him, ma’am. He’ll soon come back to his head,” and said to him, “Jo, Jo, what’s the matter?”

“I know wot she’s come for!” cried the boy.

“Who?”

“The lady there. She’s come to get me to go along with her to the berryin ground. I won’t go to the berryin ground. I don’t like the name on it. She might go a-berryin ME.” His shivering came on again, and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel.

“He has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma’am,” said Jenny softly. “Why, how you stare! This is MY lady, Jo.”

“Is it?” returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm held out above his burning eyes. “She looks to me the t’other one. It ain’t the bonnet, nor yet it ain’t the gownd, but she looks to me the t’other one.”

My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly up to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurse. Except that no such attendant could have shown him Charley’s youthful face, which seemed to engage his confidence.

“I say!” said the boy. “YOU tell me. Ain’t the lady the t’other lady?”

Charley shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him and made him as warm as she could.

“Oh!” the boy muttered. “Then I s’pose she ain’t.”

“I came to see if I could do you any good,” said I. “What is the matter with you?”

“I’m a-being froze,” returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze wandering about me, “and then burnt up, and then froze, and then burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my head’s all sleepy, and all a-going mad-like—and I’m so dry—and my bones isn’t half so much bones as pain.

“When did he come here?” I asked the woman.

“This morning, ma’am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had known him up in London yonder. Hadn’t I, Jo?”

“Tom-all-Alone’s,” the boy replied.

Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very little while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it heavily, and speak as if he were half awake.

“When did he come from London?” I asked.

“I come from London yes’day,” said the boy himself, now flushed and hot. “I’m a-going somewheres.”

“Where is he going?” I asked.

“Somewheres,” repeated the boy in a louder tone. “I have been moved on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t’other one give me the sov’ring. Mrs. Snagsby, she’s always a-watching, and a-driving of me—what have I done to her?—and they’re all a-watching and a-driving of me. Every one of ’em’s doing of it, from the time when I don’t get up, to the time when I don’t go to bed. And I’m a-going somewheres. That’s where I’m a-going. She told me, down in Tom-all-Alone’s, as she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the Stolbuns Road. It’s as good as another.”

He always concluded by addressing Charley.

“What is to be done with him?” said I, taking the woman aside. “He could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew where he was going!”

“I know no more, ma’am, than the dead,” she replied, glancing compassionately at him. “Perhaps the dead know better, if they could only tell us. I’ve kept him here all day for pity’s sake, and I’ve given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will take him in (here’s my pretty in the bed—her child, but I call it mine); but I can’t keep him long, for if my husband was to come home and find him here, he’d be rough in putting him out and might do him a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!”

The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going. When the little child awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it out of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don’t know. There she was, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living in Mrs. Blinder’s attic with Tom and Emma again.

The friend had been here and there, and had been played about from hand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was too early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last it was too late. One official sent her to another, and the other sent her back again to the first, and so backward and forward, until it appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in evading their duties instead of performing them. And now, after all, she said, breathing quickly, for she had been running and was frightened too, “Jenny, your master’s on the road home, and mine’s not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no more for him!” They put a few halfpence together and hurried them into his hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he shuffled out of the house.

“Give me the child, my dear,” said its mother to Charley, “and thank you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good night! Young lady, if my master don’t fall out with me, I’ll look down by the kiln by and by, where the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!” She hurried off, and presently we passed her hushing and singing to her child at her own door and looking anxiously along the road for her drunken husband.

I was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I should bring her into trouble. But I said to Charley that we must not leave the boy to die. Charley, who knew what to do much better than I did, and whose quickness equalled her presence of mind, glided on before me, and presently we came up with Jo, just short of the brick-kiln.

I think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under his arm and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he still carried his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went bare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. He stopped when we called to him and again showed a dread of me when I came up, standing with his lustrous eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his shivering fit.

I asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some shelter for the night.

“I don’t want no shelter,” he said; “I can lay amongst the warm bricks.”

“But don’t you know that people die there?” replied Charley.

“They dies everywheres,” said the boy. “They dies in their lodgings—she knows where; I showed her—and they dies down in Tom-all-Alone’s in heaps. They dies more than they lives, according to what I see.” Then he hoarsely whispered Charley, “If she ain’t the t’other one, she ain’t the forrenner. Is there THREE of ’em then?”

Charley looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at myself when the boy glared on me so.

But he turned and followed when I beckoned to him, and finding that he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home. It was not far, only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man. I doubted if we should have got home without assistance, the boy’s steps were so uncertain and tremulous. He made no complaint, however, and was strangely unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange a thing.

Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the window-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely could be called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into the drawing-room to speak to my guardian. There I found Mr. Skimpole, who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice, and never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing everything he wanted.

They came out with me directly to look at the boy. The servants had gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat with Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found in a ditch.

“This is a sorrowful case,” said my guardian after asking him a question or two and touching him and examining his eyes. “What do you say, Harold?”

“You had better turn him out,” said Mr. Skimpole.

“What do you mean?” inquired my guardian, almost sternly.

“My dear Jarndyce,” said Mr. Skimpole, “you know what I am: I am a child. Be cross to me if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical man. He’s not safe, you know. There’s a very bad sort of fever about him.”

Mr. Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood by.

“You’ll say it’s childish,” observed Mr. Skimpole, looking gaily at us. “Well, I dare say it may be; but I AM a child, and I never pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or five shillings, or five pound ten—you are arithmeticians, and I am not—and get rid of him!”

“And what is he to do then?” asked my guardian.

“Upon my life,” said Mr. Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his engaging smile, “I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But I have no doubt he’ll do it.”

“Now, is it not a horrible reflection,” said my guardian, to whom I had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, “is it not a horrible reflection,” walking up and down and rumpling his hair, “that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well taken care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?”

“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “you’ll pardon the simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why ISN’T he a prisoner then?”

My guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of amusement and indignation in his face.

“Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should imagine,” said Mr. Skimpole, unabashed and candid. “It seems to me that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into prison. There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and consequently more of a certain sort of poetry.”

“I believe,” returned my guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, “that there is not such another child on earth as yourself.”

“Do you really?” said Mr. Skimpole. “I dare say! But I confess I don’t see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt born with an appetite—probably, when he is in a safer state of health, he has an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young friend’s natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young friend says in effect to society, ‘I am hungry; will you have the goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?’ Society, which has taken upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce that spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says ‘You really must excuse me if I seize it.’ Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected energy, which has a certain amount of reason in it and a certain amount of romance; and I don’t know but what I should be more interested in our young friend, as an illustration of such a case, than merely as a poor vagabond—which any one can be.”

“In the meantime,” I ventured to observe, “he is getting worse.”

“In the meantime,” said Mr. Skimpole cheerfully, “as Miss Summerson, with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse. Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets still worse.”

The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never forget.

“Of course, little woman,” observed my guardian, turning to me, “I can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there to enforce it, though it’s a bad state of things when, in his condition, that is necessary. But it’s growing late, and is a very bad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. We’ll do that.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano as we moved away. “Are you going back to our young friend?”

“Yes,” said my guardian.

“How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce!” returned Mr. Skimpole with playful admiration. “You don’t mind these things; neither does Miss Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do anything. Such is will! I have no will at all—and no won’t—simply can’t.”

“You can’t recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?” said my guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half angrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr. Skimpole an accountable being.

“My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his pocket, and it’s impossible for him to do better than take it. You can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But it is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss Summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the administration of detail that she knows all about it.”

We went back into the hall and explained to Jo what we proposed to do, which Charley explained to him again and which he received with the languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at what was done as if it were for somebody else. The servants compassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help, we soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the house carried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up. It was pleasant to observe how kind they were to him and how there appeared to be a general impression among them that frequently calling him “Old Chap” was likely to revive his spirits. Charley directed the operations and went to and fro between the loft-room and the house with such little stimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. My guardian himself saw him before he was left for the night and reported to me when he returned to the growlery to write a letter on the boy’s behalf, which a messenger was charged to deliver at day-light in the morning, that he seemed easier and inclined to sleep. They had fastened his door on the outside, he said, in case of his being delirious, but had so arranged that he could not make any noise without being heard.

Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr. Skimpole was left alone all this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with great expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the drawing-room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come into his head “apropos of our young friend,” and he sang one about a peasant boy,

quite exquisitely. It was a song that always made him cry, he told us.

He was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely chirped—those were his delighted words—when he thought by what a happy talent for business he was surrounded. He gave us, in his glass of negus, “Better health to our young friend!” and supposed and gaily pursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington to become Lord Mayor of London. In that event, no doubt, he would establish the Jarndyce Institution and the Summerson Almshouses, and a little annual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. Albans. He had no doubt, he said, that our young friend was an excellent boy in his way, but his way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold Skimpole was, Harold Skimpole had found himself, to his considerable surprise, when he first made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself with all his failings and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the bargain; and he hoped we would do the same.

Charley’s last report was that the boy was quiet. I could see, from my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and I went to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered.

There was more movement and more talking than usual a little before daybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked out of my window and asked one of our men who had been among the active sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the house. The lantern was still burning in the loft-window.

“It’s the boy, miss,” said he.

“Is he worse?” I inquired.

“Gone, miss.

“Dead!”

“Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off.”

At what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed hopeless ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been left, and the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he had got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with an empty cart-house below. But he had shut it down again, if that were so; and it looked as if it had not been raised. Nothing of any kind was missing. On this fact being clearly ascertained, we all yielded to the painful belief that delirium had come upon him in the night and that, allured by some imaginary object or pursued by some imaginary horror, he had strayed away in that worse than helpless state; all of us, that is to say, but Mr. Skimpole, who repeatedly suggested, in his usual easy light style, that it had occurred to our young friend that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him, and that he had with great natural politeness taken himself off.

Every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. The brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and nobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had for some time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to admit of any tracing by footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and stack, were examined by our men for a long distance round, lest the boy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead; but nothing was seen to indicate that he had ever been near. From the time when he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.

The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased even then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current very memorable to me.

As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble. Looking up, I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.

“Charley,” said I, “are you so cold?”

“I think I am, miss,” she replied. “I don’t know what it is. I can’t hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss. Don’t be uneasy, I think I’m ill.”

I heard Ada’s voice outside, and I hurried to the door of communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the key.

Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, “Not now, my dearest. Go away. There’s nothing the matter; I will come to you presently.” Ah! It was a long, long time before my darling girl and I were companions again.

Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her to my room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. I told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary that I should seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above all. At first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and even reproached me with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter saying that she made me anxious and unhappy and imploring her, as she loved me and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than the garden. After that she came beneath the window even oftener than she had come to the door, and if I had learnt to love her dear sweet voice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love it then, when I stood behind the window-curtain listening and replying, but not so much as looking out! How did I learn to love it afterwards, when the harder time came!

They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had vacated that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There was not a servant in or about the house but was so good that they would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night without the least fear or unwillingness, but I thought it best to choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada and whom I could trust to come and go with all precaution. Through her means I got out to take the air with my guardian when there was no fear of meeting Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any more than in any other respect.

And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such a gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding her head in my arms—repose would come to her, so, when it would come to her in no other attitude—I silently prayed to our Father in heaven that I might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught me.

I was very sorrowful to think that Charley’s pretty looks would change and be disfigured, even if she recovered—she was such a child with her dimpled face—but that thought was, for the greater part, lost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind rambled again to the cares of her father’s sick bed and the little children, she still knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur out the wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At those times I used to think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that the baby who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them in their need was dead!

There were other times when Charley knew me well and talked to me, telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma and that she was sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley would speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could to comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried who was the only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the ruler’s daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of death. And Charley told me that when her father died she had kneeled down and prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be raised up and given back to his poor children, and that if she should never get better and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come into Tom’s mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show Tom how these people of old days had been brought back to life on earth, only that we might know our hope to be restored to heaven!

But of all the various times there were in Charley’s illness, there was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of. And there were many, many when I thought in the night of the last high belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in God, on the part of her poor despised father.

And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend. The hope that never had been given, from the first, of Charley being in outward appearance Charley any more soon began to be encouraged; and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish likeness again.

It was a great morning when I could tell Ada all this as she stood out in the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley and I at last took tea together in the next room. But on that same evening, I felt that I was stricken cold.

Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of her illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was rapidly following in Charley’s steps.

I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to return my darling’s cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at times—with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too large altogether.

In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare Charley, with which view I said, “You’re getting quite strong, Charley, are you not?’

“Oh, quite!” said Charley.

“Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?”

“Quite strong enough for that, miss!” cried Charley. But Charley’s face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in MY face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom, and said “Oh, miss, it’s my doing! It’s my doing!” and a great deal more out of the fullness of her grateful heart.

“Now, Charley,” said I after letting her go on for a little while, “if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were for yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley.”

“If you’ll let me cry a little longer, miss,” said Charley. “Oh, my dear, my dear! If you’ll only let me cry a little longer. Oh, my dear!”—how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as she clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears—”I’ll be good.”

So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good.

“Trust in me now, if you please, miss,” said Charley quietly. “I am listening to everything you say.”

“It’s very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor to-night that I don’t think I am well and that you are going to nurse me.”

For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. “And in the morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley, and say I am asleep—that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep. At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one come.”

Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the doctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day, and of day melting into night again; but I was just able on the first morning to get to the window and speak to my darling.

On the second morning I heard her dear voice—Oh, how dear now!—outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer softly, “Don’t disturb her, Charley, for the world!”

“How does my own Pride look, Charley?” I inquired.

“Disappointed, miss,” said Charley, peeping through the curtain.

“But I know she is very beautiful this morning.”

“She is indeed, miss,” answered Charley, peeping. “Still looking up at the window.”

With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when raised like that!

I called Charley to me and gave her her last charge.

“Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for one moment as I lie here, I shall die.”

“I never will! I never will!” she promised me.

“I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you, Charley; I am blind.”

Librivox Recording: Chapter 31

Richard had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a few days with us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs. Woodcourt, who, having come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Badger and having written to my guardian, “by her son Allan’s desire,” to report that she had heard from him and that he was well “and sent his kind remembrances to all of us,” had been invited by my guardian to make a visit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly three weeks. She took very kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew very well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt it was unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite help it.

She was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to me that perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her being so upright and trim, though I don’t think it was that, because I thought that quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the general expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty for an old lady. I don’t know what it was. Or at least if I do now, I thought I did not then. Or at least—but it don’t matter.

Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair; and, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I was quite low-spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from Crumlinwallinwer and the Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right names, which I dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery with the sentiments they expressed. Though I never knew what they were (being in Welsh), further than that they were highly eulogistic of the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig.

“So, Miss Summerson,” she would say to me with stately triumph, “this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my son goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have money, but he always has what is much better—family, my dear.”

I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig in India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used to say it was a great thing to be so highly connected.

“It IS, my dear, a great thing,” Mrs. Woodcourt would reply. “It has its disadvantages; my son’s choice of a wife, for instance, is limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is limited in much the same manner.”

Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between us notwithstanding.

“Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear,” she would say, and always with some emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate heart, “was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts of MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the Royal Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last representatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he will set them up again and unite them with another old family.”

It was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to try, only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because—but I need not be so particular. Mrs. Woodcourt never would let me change it.

“My dear,” she said one night, “you have so much sense and you look at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of mine. You don’t know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of him, I dare say, to recollect him?”

“Yes, ma’am. I recollect him.”

“Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character, and I should like to have your opinion of him.”

“Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt,” said I, “that is so difficult!”

“Why is it so difficult, my dear?” she returned. “I don’t see it myself.”

“To give an opinion—”

“On so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT’S true.”

I didn’t mean that, because Mr. Woodcourt had been at our house a good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my guardian. I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his profession—we thought—and that his kindness and gentleness to Miss Flite were above all praise.

“You do him justice!” said Mrs. Woodcourt, pressing my hand. “You define him exactly. Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession faultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must confess he is not without faults, love.”

“None of us are,” said I.

“Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to correct,” returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head. “I am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear, as a third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself.”

I said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.

“You are right again, my dear,” the old lady retorted, “but I don’t refer to his profession, look you.”

“Oh!” said I.

“No,” said she. “I refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never really cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still, it’s not right, you know; is it?”

“No,” said I, as she seemed to wait for me.

“And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear.”

I supposed it might.

“Therefore, I have told him many times that he really should be more careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others. And he has always said, ‘Mother, I will be; but you know me better than anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm—in short, mean nothing.’ All of which is very true, my dear, but is no justification. However, as he is now gone so far away and for an indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and introductions, we may consider this past and gone. And you, my dear,” said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, “regarding your dear self, my love?”

“Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?”

“Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek his fortune and to find a wife—when do you mean to seek YOUR fortune and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now you blush!”

I don’t think I did blush—at all events, it was not important if I did—and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had no wish to change it.

“Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to come for you, my love?” said Mrs. Woodcourt.

“If you believe you are a good prophet,” said I.

“Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very worthy, much older—five and twenty years, perhaps—than yourself. And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy.”

“That is a good fortune,” said I. “But why is it to be mine?”

“My dear,” she returned, “there’s suitability in it—you are so busy, and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there’s suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love, will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I shall.”

It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it did. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night uncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. I would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright old lady’s confidence if I could have possibly declined it. It gave me the most inconsistent opinions of her. At one time I thought she was a story-teller, and at another time that she was the pink of truth. Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next moment I believed her honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. And after all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could not I, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by her fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least as well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless things she said to me? Impelled towards her, as I certainly was, for I was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed that she did, why should I harp afterwards, with actual distress and pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in twenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house, and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else? These were perplexities and contradictions that I could not account for. At least, if I could—but I shall come to all that by and by, and it is mere idleness to go on about it now.

So when Mrs. Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to lose her but was relieved too. And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy brought such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.

First Caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that I was the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet said, was no news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then Caddy told us that she was going to be married in a month and that if Ada and I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the world. To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we never should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to Caddy, and Caddy had so much to say to us.

It seemed that Caddy’s unfortunate papa had got over his bankruptcy—”gone through the Gazette,” was the expression Caddy used, as if it were a tunnel—with the general clemency and commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and had given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I should think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had satisfied every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man. So, he had been honourably dismissed to “the office” to begin the world again. What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said he was a “custom-house and general agent,” and the only thing I ever understood about that business was that when he wanted money more than usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found it.

As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this shorn lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden (where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves with it), Caddy had brought about a meeting between him and old Mr. Turveydrop; and poor Mr. Jellyby, being very humble and meek, had deferred to Mr. Turveydrop’s deportment so submissively that they had become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr. Turveydrop, thus familiarized with the idea of his son’s marriage, had worked up his parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being near at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple commencing housekeeping at the academy in Newman Street when they would.

“And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?”

“Oh! Poor Pa,” said Caddy, “only cried and said he hoped we might get on better than he and Ma had got on. He didn’t say so before Prince, he only said so to me. And he said, ‘My poor girl, you have not been very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder him than marry him—if you really love him.'”

“And how did you reassure him, Caddy?”

“Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn’t help crying myself. But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better daughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned Peepy’s coming to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and said the children were Indians.”

“Indians, Caddy?”

“Yes,” said Caddy, “wild Indians. And Pa said”—here she began to sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world—”that he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their being all tomahawked together.”

Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Jellyby did not mean these destructive sentiments.

“No, of course I know Pa wouldn’t like his family to be weltering in their blood,” said Caddy, “but he means that they are very unfortunate in being Ma’s children and that he is very unfortunate in being Ma’s husband; and I am sure that’s true, though it seems unnatural to say so.”

I asked Caddy if Mrs. Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed.

“Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther,” she returned. “It’s impossible to say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough; and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was I don’t know what—a steeple in the distance,” said Caddy with a sudden idea; “and then she shakes her head and says ‘Oh, Caddy, Caddy, what a tease you are!’ and goes on with the Borrioboola letters.”

“And about your wardrobe, Caddy?” said I. For she was under no restraint with us.

“Well, my dear Esther,” she returned, drying her eyes, “I must do the best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor cares.”

Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother, but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am afraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so much to admire in the good disposition which had survived under such discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a little scheme that made her perfectly joyful. This was her staying with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one, and our all three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and sewing, and saving, and doing the very best we could think of to make the most of her stock. My guardian being as pleased with the idea as Caddy was, we took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out again in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr. Jellyby had found in the docks I suppose, but which he at all events gave her. What my guardian would not have given her if we had encouraged him, it would be difficult to say, but we thought it right to compound for no more than her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise, and if Caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat down to work.

She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over that and began to improve rapidly. So day after day she, and my darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of the town, and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.

Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious “to learn housekeeping,” as she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her learning housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke that I laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she proposed it. However, I said, “Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my dear,” and I showed her all my books and methods and all my fidgety ways. You would have supposed that I was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I jingled my housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have thought that there never was a greater imposter than I with a blinder follower than Caddy Jellyby.

So what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy to see what could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to take care of my guardian.

When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging in Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where preparations were in progress too—a good many, I observed, for enhancing the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop, and a few for putting the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the house—but our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Jellyby beforehand with some faint sense of the occasion.

The latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs. Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with waste-paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be littered with straw. Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking strong coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr. Jellyby came home, he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got something to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then, feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton Garden in the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down the house as they had always been accustomed to do.

The production of these devoted little sacrifices in any presentable condition being quite out of the question at a week’s notice, I proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could on her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama’s room, and a clean breakfast. In truth Mrs. Jellyby required a good deal of attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably since I first knew her and her hair looking like the mane of a dustman’s horse.

Thinking that the display of Caddy’s wardrobe would be the best means of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Jellyby to come and look at it spread out on Caddy’s bed in the evening after the unwholesome boy was gone.

“My dear Miss Summerson,” said she, rising from her desk with her usual sweetness of temper, “these are really ridiculous preparations, though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of Caddy being married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!”

She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes in her customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea to her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head, “My good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have been equipped for Africa!”

On our going downstairs again, Mrs. Jellyby asked me whether this troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday. And on my replying yes, she said, “Will my room be required, my dear Miss Summerson? For it’s quite impossible that I can put my papers away.”

I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted and that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere. “Well, my dear Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, “you know best, I dare say. But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that extent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don’t know which way to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday afternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious.”

“It is not likely to occur again,” said I, smiling. “Caddy will be married but once, probably.”

“That’s true,” Mrs. Jellyby replied; “that’s true, my dear. I suppose we must make the best of it!”

The next question was how Mrs. Jellyby should be dressed on the occasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior spirit who could just bear with our trifling.

The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion in which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at length we devised something not very unlike what a common-place mother might wear on such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which Mrs. Jellyby would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on by the dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then observe to me how sorry she was that I had not turned my thoughts to Africa, were consistent with the rest of her behaviour.

The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if Mrs. Jellyby’s household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul’s or Saint Peter’s, the sole advantage they would have found in the size of the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to be dirty in. I believe that nothing belonging to the family which it had been possible to break was unbroken at the time of those preparations for Caddy’s marriage, that nothing which it had been possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no domestic object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear child’s knee to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well accumulate upon it.

Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were opened—bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby’s caps, letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood, wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags, footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby’s bonnets, books with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells, heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds, umbrellas—that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known how.

“Poor Pa!” said Caddy to me on the night before the great day, when we really had got things a little to rights. “It seems unkind to leave him, Esther. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I first knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it’s useless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We never have a servant who don’t drink. Ma’s ruinous to everything.”

Mr. Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low indeed and shed tears, I thought.

“My heart aches for him; that it does!” sobbed Caddy. “I can’t help thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with Prince, and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a disappointed life!”

“My dear Caddy!” said Mr. Jellyby, looking slowly round from the wail. It was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three words together.

“Yes, Pa!” cried Caddy, going to him and embracing him affectionately.

“My dear Caddy,” said Mr. Jellyby. “Never have—”

“Not Prince, Pa?” faltered Caddy. “Not have Prince?”

“Yes, my dear,” said Mr. Jellyby. “Have him, certainly. But, never have—”

I mentioned in my account of our first visit in Thavies Inn that Richard described Mr. Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after dinner without saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy manner.

“What do you wish me not to have? Don’t have what, dear Pa?” asked Caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck.

“Never have a mission, my dear child.”

Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and this was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to expressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he had been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been completely exhausted long before I knew him.

I thought Mrs. Jellyby never would have left off serenely looking over her papers and drinking coffee that night. It was twelve o’clock before we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it required then was so discouraging that Caddy, who was almost tired out, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried. But she soon cheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went to bed.

In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay. The plain breakfast made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly charming. But when my darling came, I thought—and I think now—that I never had seen such a dear face as my beautiful pet’s.

We made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Peepy at the head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her bridal dress, and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried to think that she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again until we brought Prince up to fetch her away—when, I am sorry to say, Peepy bit him. Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop downstairs, in a state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly blessing Caddy and giving my guardian to understand that his son’s happiness was his own parental work and that he sacrificed personal considerations to ensure it. “My dear sir,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “these young people will live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation, and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have wished—you will understand the allusion, Mr. Jarndyce, for you remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent—I could have wished that my son had married into a family where there was more deportment, but the will of heaven be done!”

Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party—Mr. Pardiggle, an obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs. Pardiggle’s mite, or their five boys’ mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair brushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very much, was also there, not in the character of a disappointed lover, but as the accepted of a young—at least, an unmarried—lady, a Miss Wisk, who was also there. Miss Wisk’s mission, my guardian said, was to show the world that woman’s mission was man’s mission and that the only genuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings. The guests were few, but were, as one might expect at Mrs. Jellyby’s, all devoted to public objects only. Besides those I have mentioned, there was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the ticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church was like a fancy fair. A very contentious gentleman, who said it was his mission to be everybody’s brother but who appeared to be on terms of coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party.

A party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly have been got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them; indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat down to breakfast, that the idea of woman’s mission lying chiefly in the narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of her tyrant, man. One other singularity was that nobody with a mission—except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody’s mission—cared at all for anybody’s mission. Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear that the only one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. Mrs. Jellyby, all the while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha.

But I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride home instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went to church, and Mr. Jellyby gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr. Turveydrop, with his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig, stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say enough to do it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as prepossessing in appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the proceedings, as part of woman’s wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs. Jellyby, with her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerned of all the company.

We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs. Jellyby sat at the head of the table and Mr. Jellyby at the foot. Caddy had previously stolen upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was Turveydrop. But this piece of information, instead of being an agreeable surprise to Peepy, threw him on his back in such transports of kicking grief that I could do nothing on being sent for but accede to the proposal that he should be admitted to the breakfast table. So he came down and sat in my lap; and Mrs. Jellyby, after saying, in reference to the state of his pinafore, “Oh, you naughty Peepy, what a shocking little pig you are!” was not at all discomposed. He was very good except that he brought down Noah with him (out of an ark I had given him before we went to church) and WOULD dip him head first into the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth.

My guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial company. None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, or her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even that as part of a world in which there was anything else; but my guardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of Caddy and the honour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast nobly. What we should have done without him, I am afraid to think, for all the company despising the bride and bridegroom and old Mr. Turveydrop—and old Mr. Thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment, considering himself vastly superior to all the company—it was a very unpromising case.

At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go and when all her property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her and her husband to Gravesend. It affected us to see Caddy clinging, then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother’s neck with the greatest tenderness.

“I am very sorry I couldn’t go on writing from dictation, Ma,” sobbed Caddy. “I hope you forgive me now.”

“Oh, Caddy, Caddy!” said Mrs. Jellyby. “I have told you over and over again that I have engaged a boy, and there’s an end of it.”

“You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are sure before I go away, Ma?”

“You foolish Caddy,” returned Mrs. Jellyby, “do I look angry, or have I inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How CAN you?”

“Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!”

Mrs. Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. “You romantic child,” said she, lightly patting Caddy’s back. “Go along. I am excellent friends with you. Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very happy!”

Then Caddy hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers as if he were some poor dull child in pain. All this took place in the hall. Her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchief, and sat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. I hope he found some consolation in walls. I almost think he did.

And then Prince took her arm in his and turned with great emotion and respect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was overwhelming.

“Thank you over and over again, father!” said Prince, kissing his hand. “I am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy.”

“Very,” sobbed Caddy. “Ve-ry!”

“My dear son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “and dear daughter, I have done my duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my recompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I believe?”

“Dear father, never!” cried Prince.

“Never, never, dear Mr. Turveydrop!” said Caddy.

“This,” returned Mr. Turveydrop, “is as it should be. My children, my home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave you; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an absence of a week, I think?”

“A week, dear father. We shall return home this day week.”

“My dear child,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “let me, even under the present exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all neglected, are apt to take offence.”

“This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner.”

“Good!” said Mr. Turveydrop. “You will find fires, my dear Caroline, in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes, Prince!” anticipating some self-denying objection on his son’s part with a great air. “You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my apartment. Now, bless ye!”

They drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Jellyby or at Mr. Turveydrop, I did not know. Ada and my guardian were in the same condition when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away too, I received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr. Jellyby. He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice. I was so sure of his meaning that I said, quite flurried, “You are very welcome, sir. Pray don’t mention it!”

“I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian,” said I when we three were on our road home.

“I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see.”

“Is the wind in the east to-day?” I ventured to ask him.

He laughed heartily and answered, “No.”

“But it must have been this morning, I think,” said I.

He answered “No” again, and this time my dear girl confidently answered “No” too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring. “Much YOU know of east winds, my ugly darling,” said I, kissing her in my admiration—I couldn’t help it.

Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there was sunshine and summer air.

Librivox Recording: Chapter 30

(Image: “Nurse and Patient”)

Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Dedlock ancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. Let the gardener sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the leaves into full barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the shrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain beats, the windows rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists hide in the avenues, veil the points of view, and move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds. On all the house there is a cold, blank smell like the smell of a little church, though something dryer, suggesting that the dead and buried Dedlocks walk there in the long nights and leave the flavour of their graves behind them.

But the house in town, which is rarely in the same mind as Chesney Wold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or mourning when it mourns, excepting when a Dedlock dies—the house in town shines out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state may be, as delicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no trace of winter as hothouse flowers can make it, soft and hushed so that the ticking of the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires alone disturb the stillness in the rooms, it seems to wrap those chilled bones of Sir Leicester’s in rainbow-coloured wool. And Sir Leicester is glad to repose in dignified contentment before the great fire in the library, condescendingly perusing the backs of his books or honouring the fine arts with a glance of approbation. For he has his pictures, ancient and modern. Some of the Fancy Ball School in which art occasionally condescends to become a master, which would be best catalogued like the miscellaneous articles in a sale. As “Three high-backed chairs, a table and cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one Spanish female’s costume, three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg the model, and a suit of armour containing Don Quixote.” Or “One stone terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian senator’s dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with profile portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly mounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very rare), and Othello.”

Mr. Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my Lady pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as indifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet it may be that my Lady fears this Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he knows it. It may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no touch of compunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her beauty and all the state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the greater zest for what he is set upon and makes him the more inflexible in it. Whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable in what he has made his duty, whether absorbed in love of power, whether determined to have nothing hidden from him in ground where he has burrowed among secrets all his life, whether he in his heart despises the splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is always treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his gorgeous clients—whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my Lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at the knees.

Sir Leicester sits in my Lady’s room—that room in which Mr. Tulkinghorn read the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce—particularly complacent. My Lady, as on that day, sits before the fire with her screen in her hand. Sir Leicester is particularly complacent because he has found in his newspaper some congenial remarks bearing directly on the floodgates and the framework of society. They apply so happily to the late case that Sir Leicester has come from the library to my Lady’s room expressly to read them aloud. “The man who wrote this article,” he observes by way of preface, nodding at the fire as if he were nodding down at the man from a mount, “has a well-balanced mind.”

The man’s mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my Lady, who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught and falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire at Chesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Leicester, quite unconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as “Very true indeed,” “Very properly put,” “I have frequently made the same remark myself,” invariably losing his place after each observation, and going up and down the column to find it again.

Sir Leicester is reading with infinite gravity and state when the door opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange announcement, “The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy.”

Sir Leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, “The young man of the name of Guppy?”

Looking round, he beholds the young man of the name of Guppy, much discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of introduction in his manner and appearance.

“Pray,” says Sir Leicester to Mercury, “what do you mean by announcing with this abruptness a young man of the name of Guppy?”

“I beg your pardon, Sir Leicester, but my Lady said she would see the young man whenever he called. I was not aware that you were here, Sir Leicester.”

With this apology, Mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at the young man of the name of Guppy which plainly says, “What do you come calling here for and getting ME into a row?”

“It’s quite right. I gave him those directions,” says my Lady. “Let the young man wait.”

“By no means, my Lady. Since he has your orders to come, I will not interrupt you.” Sir Leicester in his gallantry retires, rather declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive appearance.

Lady Dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. She suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants.

“That your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a little conversation,” returns Mr. Guppy, embarrassed.

“You are, of course, the person who has written me so many letters?”

“Several, your ladyship. Several before your ladyship condescended to favour me with an answer.”

“And could you not take the same means of rendering a Conversation unnecessary? Can you not still?”

Mr. Guppy screws his mouth into a silent “No!” and shakes his head.

“You have been strangely importunate. If it should appear, after all, that what you have to say does not concern me—and I don’t know how it can, and don’t expect that it will—you will allow me to cut you short with but little ceremony. Say what you have to say, if you please.”

My Lady, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of the name of Guppy.

“With your ladyship’s permission, then,” says the young man, “I will now enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I told your ladyship in my first letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have learnt the habit of not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did not mention to your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am connected and in which my standing—and I may add income—is tolerably good. I may now state to your ladyship, in confidence, that the name of that firm is Kenge and Carboy, of Lincoln’s Inn, which may not be altogether unknown to your ladyship in connexion with the case in Chancery of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.”

My Lady’s figure begins to be expressive of some attention. She has ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were listening.

“Now, I may say to your ladyship at once,” says Mr. Guppy, a little emboldened, “it is no matter arising out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct I have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive—in fact, almost blackguardly.”

After waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the contrary, and not receiving any, Mr. Guppy proceeds, “If it had been Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I should have gone at once to your ladyship’s solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the pleasure of being acquainted with Mr. Tulkinghorn—at least we move when we meet one another—and if it had been any business of that sort, I should have gone to him.”

My Lady turns a little round and says, “You had better sit down.”

“Thank your ladyship.” Mr. Guppy does so. “Now, your ladyship”—Mr. Guppy refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made small notes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him in the densest obscurity whenever he looks at it—”I—Oh, yes!—I place myself entirely in your ladyship’s hands. If your ladyship was to make any complaint to Kenge and Carboy or to Mr. Tulkinghorn of the present visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation. That, I openly admit. Consequently, I rely upon your ladyship’s honour.”

My Lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the screen, assures him of his being worth no complaint from her.

“Thank your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy; “quite satisfactory. Now—I—dash it!—The fact is that I put down a head or two here of the order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they’re written short, and I can’t quite make out what they mean. If your ladyship will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment,I—”

Mr. Guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds, to whom he says in his confusion, “I beg your pardon, I am sure.” This does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He murmurs, growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now close to his eyes, now a long way off, “C.S. What’s C.S. for? Oh! C.S.! Oh, I know! Yes, to be sure!” And comes back enlightened.

“I am not aware,” says Mr. Guppy, standing midway between my Lady and his chair, “whether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or to see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson.”

My Lady’s eyes look at him full. “I saw a young lady of that name not long ago. This past autumn.”

“Now, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?” asks Mr. Guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda.

My Lady removes her eyes from him no more.

“No.”

“Not like your ladyship’s family?”

“No.”

“I think your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “can hardly remember Miss Summerson’s face?”

“I remember the young lady very well. What has this to do with me?”

“Your ladyship, I do assure you that having Miss Summerson’s image imprinted on my ‘eart—which I mention in confidence—I found, when I had the honour of going over your ladyship’s mansion of Chesney Wold while on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a friend, such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your ladyship’s own portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much so that I didn’t at the moment even know what it WAS that knocked me over. And now I have the honour of beholding your ladyship near (I have often, since that, taken the liberty of looking at your ladyship in your carriage in the park, when I dare say you was not aware of me, but I never saw your ladyship so near), it’s really more surprising than I thought it.”

Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call, when that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute’s purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at this moment.

My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him again what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with her.

“Your ladyship,” replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper, “I am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! ‘Mrs. Chadband.’ Yes.” Mr. Guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself again. My Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady gaze. “A—stop a minute, though!” Mr. Guppy refers again. “E.S. twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on.”

Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech with, Mr. Guppy proceeds.

“Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson’s birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact because—which I mention in confidence—I know it in the way of my profession at Kenge and Carboy’s. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss Summerson’s image is imprinted on my ‘eart. If I could clear this mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having the honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship’s family she had a right to be made a party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, why, I might make a sort of a claim upon Miss Summerson to look with an eye of more dedicated favour on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet. In fact, as yet she hasn’t favoured them at all.”

A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Lady’s face.

“Now, it’s a very singular circumstance, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of us professional men—which I may call myself, for though not admitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by Kenge and Carboy, on my mother’s advancing from the principal of her little income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy—that I have encountered the person who lived as servant with the lady who brought Miss Summerson up before Mr. Jarndyce took charge of her. That lady was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship.”

Is the dead colour on my Lady’s face reflected from the screen which has a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised hand as if she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that has fallen on her?

“Did your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “ever happen to hear of Miss Barbary?”

“I don’t know. I think so. Yes.”

“Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship’s family?”

My Lady’s lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head.

“NOT connected?” says Mr. Guppy. “Oh! Not to your ladyship’s knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes.” After each of these interrogatories, she has inclined her head. “Very good! Now, this Miss Barbary was extremely close—seems to have been extraordinarily close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least) rather given to conversation—and my witness never had an idea whether she possessed a single relative. On one occasion, and only one, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a single point, and she then told her that the little girl’s real name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon.”

“My God!”

Mr. Guppy stares. Lady Dedlock sits before him looking him through, with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what he has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead condition seem to have passed away like the features of those long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which, struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath.

“Your ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?”

“I have heard it before.”

“Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship’s family?”

“No.”

“Now, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “I come to the last point of the case, so far as I have got it up. It’s going on, and I shall gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must know—if your ladyship don’t happen, by any chance, to know already—that there was found dead at the house of a person named Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great distress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown. But, your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer’s name was Hawdon.”

“And what is THAT to me?”

“Aye, your ladyship, that’s the question! Now, your ladyship, a queer thing happened after that man’s death. A lady started up, a disguised lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of action and went to look at his grave. She hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it her. If your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in corroboration of this statement, I can lay my hand upon him at any time.”

The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she does NOT wish to have him produced.

“Oh, I assure your ladyship it’s a very queer start indeed,” says Mr. Guppy. “If you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off, you’d think it quite romantic.”

There are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen. My Lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again with that expression which in other times might have been so dangerous to the young man of the name of Guppy.

“It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind him by which he could be possibly identified. But he did. He left a bundle of old letters.”

The screen still goes, as before. All this time her eyes never once release him.

“They were taken and secreted. And to-morrow night, your ladyship, they will come into my possession.”

“Still I ask you, what is this to me?”

“Your ladyship, I conclude with that.” Mr. Guppy rises. “If you think there’s enough in this chain of circumstances put together—in the undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your ladyship, which is a positive fact for a jury; in her having been brought up by Miss Barbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss Summerson’s real name to be Hawdon; in your ladyship’s knowing both these names VERY WELL; and in Hawdon’s dying as he did—to give your ladyship a family interest in going further into the case, I will bring these papers here. I don’t know what they are, except that they are old letters: I have never had them in my possession yet. I will bring those papers here as soon as I get them and go over them for the first time with your ladyship. I have told your ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint was made, and all is in strict confidence.”

Is this the full purpose of the young man of the name of Guppy, or has he any other? Do his words disclose the length, breadth, depth, of his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what do they hide? He is a match for my Lady there. She may look at him, but he can look at the table and keep that witness-box face of his from telling anything.

“You may bring the letters,” says my Lady, “if you choose.”

“Your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,” says Mr. Guppy, a little injured.

“You may bring the letters,” she repeats in the same tone, “if you—please.”

“It shall be done. I wish your ladyship good day.”

On a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and clasped like an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, takes it to her and unlocks it.

“Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of that sort,” says Mr. Guppy, “and I couldn’t accept anything of the kind. I wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the same.”

So the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.

As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper, is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to make the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the very portraits frown, the very armour stir?

No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint vibration to Sir Leicester’s ears; and yet this cry is in the house, going upward from a wild figure on its knees.

“O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!”

Librivox Recording: Chapter 29

(Image: “The Young Man of the Name of Guppy”)

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.

“I occasionally meet on my staircase here,” drawls Volumnia, whose thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long evening of very desultory talk, “one of the prettiest girls, I think, that I ever saw in my life.”

“A PROTEGEE of my Lady’s,” observes Sir Leicester.

“I thought so. I felt sure that some uncommon eye must have picked that girl out. She really is a marvel. A dolly sort of beauty perhaps,” says Miss Volumnia, reserving her own sort, “but in its way, perfect; such bloom I never saw!”

Sir Leicester, with his magnificent glance of displeasure at the rouge, appears to say so too.

“Indeed,” remarks my Lady languidly, “if there is any uncommon eye in the case, it is Mrs. Rouncewell’s, and not mine. Rosa is her discovery.”

“Your maid, I suppose?”

“No. My anything; pet—secretary—messenger—I don’t know what.”

“You like to have her about you, as you would like to have a flower, or a bird, or a picture, or a poodle—no, not a poodle, though—or anything else that was equally pretty?” says Volumnia, sympathizing. “Yes, how charming now! And how well that delightful old soul Mrs. Rouncewell is looking. She must be an immense age, and yet she is as active and handsome! She is the dearest friend I have, positively!”

Sir Leicester feels it to be right and fitting that the housekeeper of Chesney Wold should be a remarkable person. Apart from that, he has a real regard for Mrs. Rouncewell and likes to hear her praised. So he says, “You are right, Volumnia,” which Volumnia is extremely glad to hear.

“She has no daughter of her own, has she?”

“Mrs. Rouncewell? No, Volumnia. She has a son. Indeed, she had two.”

My Lady, whose chronic malady of boredom has been sadly aggravated by Volumnia this evening, glances wearily towards the candlesticks and heaves a noiseless sigh.

“And it is a remarkable example of the confusion into which the present age has fallen; of the obliteration of landmarks, the opening of floodgates, and the uprooting of distinctions,” says Sir Leicester with stately gloom, “that I have been informed by Mr. Tulkinghorn that Mrs. Rouncewell’s son has been invited to go into Parliament.”

Miss Volumnia utters a little sharp scream.

“Yes, indeed,” repeats Sir Leicester. “Into Parliament.”

“I never heard of such a thing! Good gracious, what is the man?” exclaims Volumnia.

“He is called, I believe—an—ironmaster.” Sir Leicester says it slowly and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is called a lead-mistress or that the right word may be some other word expressive of some other relationship to some other metal.

Volumnia utters another little scream.

“He has declined the proposal, if my information from Mr. Tulkinghorn be correct, as I have no doubt it is. Mr. Tulkinghorn being always correct and exact; still that does not,” says Sir Leicester, “that does not lessen the anomaly, which is fraught with strange considerations—startling considerations, as it appears to me.”

Miss Volumnia rising with a look candlestick-wards, Sir Leicester politely performs the grand tour of the drawing-room, brings one, and lights it at my Lady’s shaded lamp.

“I must beg you, my Lady,” he says while doing so, “to remain a few moments, for this individual of whom I speak arrived this evening shortly before dinner and requested in a very becoming note”—Sir Leicester, with his habitual regard to truth, dwells upon it—”I am bound to say, in a very becoming and well-expressed note, the favour of a short interview with yourself and MYself on the subject of this young girl. As it appeared that he wished to depart to-night, I replied that we would see him before retiring.”

Miss Volumnia with a third little scream takes flight, wishing her hosts—O Lud!—well rid of the—what is it?—ironmaster!

The other cousins soon disperse, to the last cousin there. Sir Leicester rings the bell, “Make my compliments to Mr. Rouncewell, in the housekeeper’s apartments, and say I can receive him now.”

My Lady, who has heard all this with slight attention outwardly, looks towards Mr. Rouncewell as he comes in. He is a little over fifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother, and has a clear voice, a broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a shrewd though open face. He is a responsible-looking gentleman dressed in black, portly enough, but strong and active. Has a perfectly natural and easy air and is not in the least embarrassed by the great presence into which he comes.

“Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, as I have already apologized for intruding on you, I cannot do better than be very brief. I thank you, Sir Leicester.”

The head of the Dedlocks has motioned towards a sofa between himself and my Lady. Mr. Rouncewell quietly takes his seat there.

“In these busy times, when so many great undertakings are in progress, people like myself have so many workmen in so many places that we are always on the flight.”

Sir Leicester is content enough that the ironmaster should feel that there is no hurry there; there, in that ancient house, rooted in that quiet park, where the ivy and the moss have had time to mature, and the gnarled and warted elms and the umbrageous oaks stand deep in the fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the terrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much the property of every Dedlock—while he lasted—as the house and lands. Sir Leicester sits down in an easy-chair, opposing his repose and that of Chesney Wold to the restless flights of ironmasters.

“Lady Dedlock has been so kind,” proceeds Mr. Rouncewell with a respectful glance and a bow that way, “as to place near her a young beauty of the name of Rosa. Now, my son has fallen in love with Rosa and has asked my consent to his proposing marriage to her and to their becoming engaged if she will take him—which I suppose she will. I have never seen Rosa until to-day, but I have some confidence in my son’s good sense—even in love. I find her what he represents her, to the best of my judgment; and my mother speaks of her with great commendation.”

“She in all respects deserves it,” says my Lady.

“I am happy, Lady Dedlock, that you say so, and I need not comment on the value to me of your kind opinion of her.”

“That,” observes Sir Leicester with unspeakable grandeur, for he thinks the ironmaster a little too glib, “must be quite unnecessary.”

“Quite unnecessary, Sir Leicester. Now, my son is a very young man, and Rosa is a very young woman. As I made my way, so my son must make his; and his being married at present is out of the question. But supposing I gave my consent to his engaging himself to this pretty girl, if this pretty girl will engage herself to him, I think it a piece of candour to say at once—I am sure, Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, you will understand and excuse me—I should make it a condition that she did not remain at Chesney Wold. Therefore, before communicating further with my son, I take the liberty of saying that if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or objectionable, I will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time and leave it precisely where it is.”

Not remain at Chesney Wold! Make it a condition! All Sir Leicester’s old misgivings relative to Wat Tyler and the people in the iron districts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight come in a shower upon his head, the fine grey hair of which, as well as of his whiskers, actually stirs with indignation.

“Am I to understand, sir,” says Sir Leicester, “and is my Lady to understand”—he brings her in thus specially, first as a point of gallantry, and next as a point of prudence, having great reliance on her sense—”am I to understand, Mr. Rouncewell, and is my Lady to understand, sir, that you consider this young woman too good for Chesney Wold or likely to be injured by remaining here?”

“Certainly not, Sir Leicester,”

“I am glad to hear it.” Sir Leicester very lofty indeed.

“Pray, Mr. Rouncewell,” says my Lady, warning Sir Leicester off with the slightest gesture of her pretty hand, as if he were a fly, “explain to me what you mean.”

“Willingly, Lady Dedlock. There is nothing I could desire more.”

Addressing her composed face, whose intelligence, however, is too quick and active to be concealed by any studied impassiveness, however habitual, to the strong Saxon face of the visitor, a picture of resolution and perseverance, my Lady listens with attention, occasionally slightly bending her head.

“I am the son of your housekeeper, Lady Dedlock, and passed my childhood about this house. My mother has lived here half a century and will die here I have no doubt. She is one of those examples—perhaps as good a one as there is—of love, and attachment, and fidelity in such a nation, which England may well be proud of, but of which no order can appropriate the whole pride or the whole merit, because such an instance bespeaks high worth on two sides—on the great side assuredly, on the small one no less assuredly.”

Sir Leicester snorts a little to hear the law laid down in this way, but in his honour and his love of truth, he freely, though silently, admits the justice of the ironmaster’s proposition.

“Pardon me for saying what is so obvious, but I wouldn’t have it hastily supposed,” with the least turn of his eyes towards Sir Leicester, “that I am ashamed of my mother’s position here, or wanting in all just respect for Chesney Wold and the family. I certainly may have desired—I certainly have desired, Lady Dedlock—that my mother should retire after so many years and end her days with me. But as I have found that to sever this strong bond would be to break her heart, I have long abandoned that idea.”

Sir Leicester very magnificent again at the notion of Mrs. Rouncewell being spirited off from her natural home to end her days with an ironmaster.

“I have been,” proceeds the visitor in a modest, clear way, “an apprentice and a workman. I have lived on workman’s wages, years and years, and beyond a certain point have had to educate myself. My wife was a foreman’s daughter, and plainly brought up. We have three daughters besides this son of whom I have spoken, and being fortunately able to give them greater advantages than we have had ourselves, we have educated them well, very well. It has been one of our great cares and pleasures to make them worthy of any station.”

A little boastfulness in his fatherly tone here, as if he added in his heart, “even of the Chesney Wold station.” Not a little more magnificence, therefore, on the part of Sir Leicester.

“All this is so frequent, Lady Dedlock, where I live, and among the class to which I belong, that what would be generally called unequal marriages are not of such rare occurrence with us as elsewhere. A son will sometimes make it known to his father that he has fallen in love, say, with a young woman in the factory. The father, who once worked in a factory himself, will be a little disappointed at first very possibly. It may be that he had other views for his son. However, the chances are that having ascertained the young woman to be of unblemished character, he will say to his son, ‘I must be quite sure you are in earnest here. This is a serious matter for both of you. Therefore I shall have this girl educated for two years,’ or it may be, ‘I shall place this girl at the same school with your sisters for such a time, during which you will give me your word and honour to see her only so often. If at the expiration of that time, when she has so far profited by her advantages as that you may be upon a fair equality, you are both in the same mind, I will do my part to make you happy.’ I know of several cases such as I describe, my Lady, and I think they indicate to me my own course now.”

Sir Leicester’s magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly.

“Mr. Rouncewell,” says Sir Leicester with his right hand in the breast of his blue coat, the attitude of state in which he is painted in the gallery, “do you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold and a—” Here he resists a disposition to choke, “a factory?”

“I need not reply, Sir Leicester, that the two places are very different; but for the purposes of this case, I think a parallel may be justly drawn between them.”

Sir Leicester directs his majestic glance down one side of the long drawing-room and up the other before he can believe that he is awake.

“Are you aware, sir, that this young woman whom my Lady—my Lady—has placed near her person was brought up at the village school outside the gates?”

“Sir Leicester, I am quite aware of it. A very good school it is, and handsomely supported by this family.”

“Then, Mr. Rouncewell,” returns Sir Leicester, “the application of what you have said is, to me, incomprehensible.”

“Will it be more comprehensible, Sir Leicester, if I say,” the ironmaster is reddening a little, “that I do not regard the village school as teaching everything desirable to be known by my son’s wife?”

From the village school of Chesney Wold, intact as it is this minute, to the whole framework of society; from the whole framework of society, to the aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in consequence of people (iron-masters, lead-mistresses, and what not) not minding their catechism, and getting out of the station unto which they are called—necessarily and for ever, according to Sir Leicester’s rapid logic, the first station in which they happen to find themselves; and from that, to their educating other people out of THEIR stations, and so obliterating the landmarks, and opening the floodgates, and all the rest of it; this is the swift progress of the Dedlock mind.

“My Lady, I beg your pardon. Permit me, for one moment!” She has given a faint indication of intending to speak. “Mr. Rouncewell, our views of duty, and our views of station, and our views of education, and our views of—in short, ALL our views—are so diametrically opposed, that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your feelings and repellent to my own. This young woman is honoured with my Lady’s notice and favour. If she wishes to withdraw herself from that notice and favour or if she chooses to place herself under the influence of any one who may in his peculiar opinions—you will allow me to say, in his peculiar opinions, though I readily admit that he is not accountable for them to me—who may, in his peculiar opinions, withdraw her from that notice and favour, she is at any time at liberty to do so. We are obliged to you for the plainness with which you have spoken. It will have no effect of itself, one way or other, on the young woman’s position here. Beyond this, we can make no terms; and here we beg—if you will be so good—to leave the subject.”

The visitor pauses a moment to give my Lady an opportunity, but she says nothing. He then rises and replies, “Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, allow me to thank you for your attention and only to observe that I shall very seriously recommend my son to conquer his present inclinations. Good night!”

“Mr. Rouncewell,” says Sir Leicester with all the nature of a gentleman shining in him, “it is late, and the roads are dark. I hope your time is not so precious but that you will allow my Lady and myself to offer you the hospitality of Chesney Wold, for to-night at least.”

“I hope so,” adds my Lady.

“I am much obliged to you, but I have to travel all night in order to reach a distant part of the country punctually at an appointed time in the morning.”

Therewith the ironmaster takes his departure, Sir Leicester ringing the bell and my Lady rising as he leaves the room.

When my Lady goes to her boudoir, she sits down thoughtfully by the fire, and inattentive to the Ghost’s Walk, looks at Rosa, writing in an inner room. Presently my Lady calls her.

“Come to me, child. Tell me the truth. Are you in love?”

“Oh! My Lady!”

My Lady, looking at the downcast and blushing face, says smiling, “Who is it? Is it Mrs. Rouncewell’s grandson?”

“Yes, if you please, my Lady. But I don’t know that I am in love with him—yet.”

“Yet, you silly little thing! Do you know that he loves YOU, yet?”

“I think he likes me a little, my Lady.” And Rosa bursts into tears.

Is this Lady Dedlock standing beside the village beauty, smoothing her dark hair with that motherly touch, and watching her with eyes so full of musing interest? Aye, indeed it is!

“Listen to me, child. You are young and true, and I believe you are attached to me.”

“Indeed I am, my Lady. Indeed there is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to show how much.”

“And I don’t think you would wish to leave me just yet, Rosa, even for a lover?”

“No, my Lady! Oh, no!” Rosa looks up for the first time, quite frightened at the thought.

“Confide in me, my child. Don’t fear me. I wish you to be happy, and will make you so—if I can make anybody happy on this earth.”

Rosa, with fresh tears, kneels at her feet and kisses her hand. My Lady takes the hand with which she has caught it, and standing with her eyes fixed on the fire, puts it about and about between her own two hands, and gradually lets it fall. Seeing her so absorbed, Rosa softly withdraws; but still my Lady’s eyes are on the fire.

In search of what? Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life? Or does she listen to the Ghost’s Walk and think what step does it most resemble? A man’s? A woman’s? The pattering of a little child’s feet, ever coming on—on—on? Some melancholy influence is upon her, or why should so proud a lady close the doors and sit alone upon the hearth so desolate?

Volumnia is away next day, and all the cousins are scattered before dinner. Not a cousin of the batch but is amazed to hear from Sir Leicester at breakfast-time of the obliteration of landmarks, and opening of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society, manifested through Mrs. Rouncewell’s son. Not a cousin of the batch but is really indignant, and connects it with the feebleness of William Buffy when in office, and really does feel deprived of a stake in the country—or the pension list—or something—by fraud and wrong. As to Volumnia, she is handed down the great staircase by Sir Leicester, as eloquent upon the theme as if there were a general rising in the north of England to obtain her rouge-pot and pearl necklace. And thus, with a clatter of maids and valets—for it is one appurtenance of their cousinship that however difficult they may find it to keep themselves, they MUST keep maids and valets—the cousins disperse to the four winds of heaven; and the one wintry wind that blows to-day shakes a shower from the trees near the deserted house, as if all the cousins had been changed into leaves.

Librivox Recording: Chapter 28

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 ceiling, 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.”

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 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.

Librivox Recording: Chapter 27

Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep. Gentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse from personal experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills; spies of strong governments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable fear, broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers, and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the branding-iron beneath their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in Nero, and more crime than is in Newgate. For howsoever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about bills and promissory notes than in any other form he wears. And in such form Mr. Bucket shall find him, when he will, still pervading the tributary channels of Leicester Square.

But the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. It wakes Mr. George of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise, roll up and stow away their mattresses. Mr. George, having shaved himself before a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out, bare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon comes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and exceedingly cold water. As he rubs himself upon a large jack-towel, blowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his hair curling tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more he rubs it so that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less coercive instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb—as he rubs, and puffs, and polishes, and blows, turning his head from side to side the more conveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with his body well bent forward to keep the wet from his martial legs, Phil, on his knees lighting a fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for him to see all that done, and sufficient renovation for one day to take in the superfluous health his master throws off.

When Mr. George is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil, shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it, winks with sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr. George’s toilet is soon performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and marches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while Phil, raising a powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares breakfast. He smokes gravely and marches in slow time. Perhaps this morning’s pipe is devoted to the memory of Gridley in his grave.

“And so, Phil,” says George of the shooting gallery after several turns in silence, “you were dreaming of the country last night?”

Phil, by the by, said as much in a tone of surprise as he scrambled out of bed.

“Yes, guv’ner.”

“What was it like?”

“I hardly know what it was like, guv’ner,” said Phil, considering.

“How did you know it was the country?”

“On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it,” says Phil after further consideration.

“What were the swans doing on the grass?”

“They was a-eating of it, I expect,” says Phil.

The master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of breakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparation, being limited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for two and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty grate; but as Phil has to sidle round a considerable part of the gallery for every object he wants, and never brings two objects at once, it takes time under the circumstances. At length the breakfast is ready. Phil announcing it, Mr. George knocks the ashes out of his pipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself in the chimney corner, and sits down to the meal. When he has helped himself, Phil follows suit, sitting at the extreme end of the little oblong table and taking his plate on his knees. Either in humility, or to hide his blackened hands, or because it is his natural manner of eating.

“The country,” says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; “why, I suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?”

“I see the marshes once,” says Phil, contentedly eating his breakfast.

“What marshes?”

“THE marshes, commander,” returns Phil.

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know where they are,” says Phil; “but I see ’em, guv’ner. They was flat. And miste.”

Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil, expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to nobody but Mr. George.

“I was born in the country, Phil.”

“Was you indeed, commander?”

“Yes. And bred there.”

Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still staring at him.

“There’s not a bird’s note that I don’t know,” says Mr. George. “Not many an English leaf or berry that I couldn’t name. Not many a tree that I couldn’t climb yet if I was put to it. I was a real country boy, once. My good mother lived in the country.”

“She must have been a fine old lady, guv’ner,” Phil observes.

“Aye! And not so old either, five and thirty years ago,” says Mr. George. “But I’ll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright as me, and near as broad across the shoulders.”

“Did she die at ninety, guv’ner?” inquires Phil.

“No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!” says the trooper. “What set me on about country boys, and runaways, and good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your eyes upon the country—marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?”

Phil shakes his head.

“Do you want to see it?”

“N-no, I don’t know as I do, particular,” says Phil.

“The town’s enough for you, eh?”

“Why, you see, commander,” says Phil, “I ain’t acquainted with anythink else, and I doubt if I ain’t a-getting too old to take to novelties.”

“How old ARE you, Phil?” asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys his smoking saucer to his lips.

“I’m something with a eight in it,” says Phil. “It can’t be eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It’s betwixt ’em, somewheres.”

Mr. George, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its contents, is laughingly beginning, “Why, what the deuce, Phil—” when he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on his dirty fingers.

“I was just eight,” says Phil, “agreeable to the parish calculation, when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand, and I see him a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery comfortable, and he says, ‘Would you like to come along a me, my man?’ I says ‘Yes,’ and him and me and the fire goes home to Clerkenwell together. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day come round again, I says to myself, ‘Now, old chap, you’re one and a eight in it.’ April Fool Day after that, I says, ‘Now, old chap, you’re two and a eight in it.’ In course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight in it. When it got so high, it got the upper hand of me, but this is how I always know there’s a eight in it.”

“Ah!” says Mr. George, resuming his breakfast. “And where’s the tinker?”

“Drink put him in the hospital, guv’ner, and the hospital put him—in a glass-case, I HAVE heerd,” Phil replies mysteriously.

“By that means you got promotion? Took the business, Phil?”

“Yes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn’t much of a beat—round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffeld, and there—poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the kettles till they’re past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come and lodge at our place; that was the best part of my master’s earnings. But they didn’t come to me. I warn’t like him. He could sing ’em a good song. I couldn’t! He could play ’em a tune on any sort of pot you please, so as it was iron or block tin. I never could do nothing with a pot but mend it or bile it—never had a note of music in me. Besides, I was too ill-looking, and their wives complained of me.”

“They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd, Phil!” says the trooper with a pleasant smile.

“No, guv’ner,” returns Phil, shaking his head. “No, I shouldn’t. I was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and swallering the smoke, and what with being nat’rally unfort’nate in the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older, almost whenever he was too far gone in drink—which was almost always—my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time. As to since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men was given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at a gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling at the firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!”

Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While drinking it, he says, “It was after the case-filling blow-up when I first see you, commander. You remember?”

“I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun.”

“Crawling, guv’ner, again a wall—”

“True, Phil—shouldering your way on—”

“In a night-cap!” exclaims Phil, excited.

“In a night-cap—”

“And hobbling with a couple of sticks!” cries Phil, still more excited.

“With a couple of sticks. When—”

“When you stops, you know,” cries Phil, putting down his cup and saucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, “and says to me, ‘What, comrade! You have been in the wars!’ I didn’t say much to you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person so strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to such a limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you, delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was like a glass of something hot, ‘What accident have you met with? You have been badly hurt. What’s amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us about it!’ Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you, you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!” cries Phil, who has started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. “If a mark’s wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers take aim at me. They can’t spoil MY beauty. I’M all right. Come on! If they want a man to box at, let ’em box at me. Let ’em knock me well about the head. I don’t mind. If they want a light-weight to be throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let ’em throw me. They won’t hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!”

With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and accompanied by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to clear away the breakfast.

Mr. George, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the gallery into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells, and afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is getting “too fleshy,” engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice. Meanwhile Phil has fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws and unscrews, and cleans, and files, and whistles into small apertures, and blackens himself more and more, and seems to do and undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun.

Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage, where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery, bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any day in the year but the fifth of November.

It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old England up alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as the chair is put down. At which point the figure in it gasping, “O Lord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!” adds, “How de do, my dear friend, how de do?” Mr. George then descries, in the procession, the venerable Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his granddaughter Judy as body-guard.

“Mr. George, my dear friend,” says Grandfather Smallweed, removing his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly throttled coming along, “how de do? You’re surprised to see me, my dear friend.”

“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 bears 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 fire-arms 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 hugged 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.

Librivox Recording: Chatper 26

(Image: “Visitors to the Shooting Gallery”)

There is disquietude in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. Black suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook’s Courtiers are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but Mr. Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it.

For Tom-all-Alone’s and Lincoln’s Inn Fields persist in harnessing themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr. Snagsby’s imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr. Snagsby pauses in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes and stares at the kitchen wall.

Mr. Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with. Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s chambers; his veneration for the mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers, whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective Mr. Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some dangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it is the fearful peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of his daily life, at any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at any entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may take air and fire, explode, and blow up—Mr. Bucket only knows whom.

For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many men unknown do) and says, “Is Mr. Snagsby in?” or words to that innocent effect, Mr. Snagsby’s heart knocks hard at his guilty breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they are made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the counter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why they can’t speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys persist in walking into Mr. Snagsby’s sleep and terrifying him with unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the morning, Mr. Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his little woman shaking him and saying “What’s the matter with the man!”

The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. To know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has under all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth, which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head, gives Mr. Snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who has a reservation from his master and will look anywhere rather than meet his eye.

These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not lost upon her. They impel her to say, “Snagsby has something on his mind!” And thus suspicion gets into Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as natural and short as from Cook’s Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy gets into Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs. Snagsby’s breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr. Snagsby’s pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby’s letters; to private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.

Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The ‘prentices think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times. Guster holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where they were found floating among the orphans) that there is buried money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he said the Lord’s Prayer backwards.

“Who was Nimrod?” Mrs. Snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself. “Who was that lady—that creature? And who is that boy?” Now, Nimrod being as dead as the mighty hunter whose name Mrs. Snagsby has appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her mental eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy. “And who,” quoth Mrs. Snagsby for the thousand and first time, “is that boy? Who is that—!” And there Mrs. Snagsby is seized with an inspiration.

He has no respect for Mr. Chadband. No, to be sure, and he wouldn’t have, of course. Naturally he wouldn’t, under those contagious circumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr. Chadband—why, Mrs. Snagsby heard it herself with her own ears!—to come back, and be told where he was to go, to be addressed by Mr. Chadband; and he never came! Why did he never come? Because he was told not to come. Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha! Mrs. Snagsby sees it all.

But happily (and Mrs. Snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly smiles) that boy was met by Mr. Chadband yesterday in the streets; and that boy, as affording a subject which Mr. Chadband desires to improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was seized by Mr. Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to the police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived and unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear in Cook’s Court to-morrow night, “to—mor—row—night,” Mrs. Snagsby repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and another tight shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will be here, and to-morrow night Mrs. Snagsby will have her eye upon him and upon some one else; and oh, you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says Mrs. Snagsby with haughtiness and scorn), but you can’t blind ME!

Mrs. Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody’s ears, but holds her purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the savoury preparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes. Comes Mr. Snagsby in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when the gorging vessel is replete) the ‘prentices and Guster, to be edified; comes at last, with his slouching head, and his shuffle backward, and his shuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right, and his shuffle to the left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy hand, which he picks as if it were some mangy bird he had caught and was plucking before eating raw, Jo, the very, very tough subject Mr. Chadband is to improve.

Mrs. Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo as he is brought into the little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr. Snagsby the moment he comes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr. Snagsby? Mr. Snagsby looks at him. Why should he do that, but that Mrs. Snagsby sees it all? Why else should that look pass between them, why else should Mr. Snagsby be confused and cough a signal cough behind his hand? It is as clear as crystal that Mr. Snagsby is that boy’s father.

“Peace, my friends,” says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily exudations from his reverend visage. “Peace be with us! My friends, why with us? Because,” with his fat smile, “it cannot be against us, because it must be for us; because it is not hardening, because it is softening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but comes home unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My human boy, come forward!”

Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband lays the same on Jo’s arm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his reverend friend’s intentions and not at all clear but that something practical and painful is going to be done to him, mutters, “You let me alone. I never said nothink to you. You let me alone.”

“No, my young friend,” says Chadband smoothly, “I will not let you alone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your profit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My young friend, sit upon this stool.”

Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms and is got into the required position with great difficulty and every possible manifestation of reluctance.

When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband, retiring behind the table, holds up his bear’s-paw and says, “My friends!” This is the signal for a general settlement of the audience. The ‘prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. Guster falls into a staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr. Chadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches her nearly. Mrs. Snagsby silently lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs. Chadband composes herself grimly by the fire and warms her knees, finding that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence.

It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his points with that particular person, who is understood to be expected to be moved to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of inward working, which expression of inward working, being echoed by some elderly lady in the next pew and so communicated like a game of forfeits through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present, serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering and gets Mr. Chadband’s steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chadband in saying “My friends!” has rested his eye on Mr. Snagsby and proceeds to make that ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate recipient of his discourse.

“We have here among us, my friends,” says Chadband, “a Gentile and a heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone’s and a mover-on upon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,” and Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail, bestows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying that he will throw him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down, “a brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of these possessions? Why? Why is he?” Mr. Chadband states the question as if he were propounding an entirely new riddle of much ingenuity and merit to Mr. Snagsby and entreating him not to give it up.

Mr. Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received just now from his little woman—at about the period when Mr. Chadband mentioned the word parents—is tempted into modestly remarking, “I don’t know, I’m sure, sir.” On which interruption Mrs. Chadband glares and Mrs. Snagsby says, “For shame!”

“I hear a voice,” says Chadband; “is it a still small voice, my friends? I fear not, though I fain would hopeso—”

“Ah—h!” from Mrs. Snagsby.

“Which says, ‘I don’t know.’ Then I will tell you why. I say this brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in upon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you, what is that light?”

Mr. Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not to be lured on to his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly into Mr. Snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned.

“It is,” says Chadband, “the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon of moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth.”

Mr. Chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at Mr. Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that.

“Of Terewth,” says Mr. Chadband, hitting him again. “Say not to me that it is NOT the lamp of lamps. I say to you it is. I say to you, a million of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a speaking-trumpet! I say to you that if you rear yourself against it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you shall be flawed, you shall be smashed.”

The present effect of this flight of oratory—much admired for its general power by Mr. Chadband’s followers—being not only to make Mr. Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr. Snagsby in the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of brass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet more disconcerted and is in a very advanced state of low spirits and false position when Mr. Chadband accidentally finishes him.

“My friends,” he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some time—and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his pocket-handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab—”to pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to which I have alluded. For, my young friends,” suddenly addressing the ‘prentices and Guster, to their consternation, “if I am told by the doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I may wish to be informed of that before I dose myself with either or with both. Now, my young friends, what is this Terewth then? Firstly (in a spirit of love), what is the common sort of Terewth—the working clothes—the every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?”

“Ah—h!” from Mrs. Snagsby.

“Is it suppression?”

A shiver in the negative from Mrs. Snagsby.

“Is it reservation?”

A shake of the head from Mrs. Snagsby—very long and very tight.

“No, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names belongs to it. When this young heathen now among us—who is now, my friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I should have to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for his sake—when this young hardened heathen told us a story of a cock, and of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign, was THAT the Terewth? No. Or if it was partly, was it wholly and entirely? No, my friends, no!”

If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman’s look as it enters at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole tenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.

“Or, my juvenile friends,” says Chadband, descending to the level of their comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the purpose, “if the master of this house was to go forth into the city and there see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto him the mistress of this house, and was to say, ‘Sarah, rejoice with me, for I have seen an elephant!’ would THAT be Terewth?”

Mrs. Snagsby in tears.

“Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and returning said ‘Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,’ would THAT be Terewth?”

Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly.

“Or put it, my juvenile friends,” said Chadband, stimulated by the sound, “that the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen—for parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt—after casting him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher’s meat and poultry, would THAT be Terewth?”

Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook’s Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though much exhausted, in which state of affairs Mr. Snagsby, trampled and crushed in the piano-forte removal, and extremely timid and feeble, ventures to come out from behind the door in the drawing-room.

All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to be an unimprovable reprobate and that it’s no good HIS trying to keep awake, for HE won’t never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that there is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common men, that if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without their modest aid—it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from it yet!

Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers and the Reverend Chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend Chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him talk for five minutes. “It an’t no good my waiting here no longer,” thinks Jo. “Mr. Snagsby an’t a-going to say nothink to me to-night.” And downstairs he shuffles.

But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the handrail of the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the same having been induced by Mrs. Snagsby’s screaming. She has her own supper of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she ventures to interchange a word or so for the first time.

“Here’s something to eat, poor boy,” says Guster.

“Thank’ee, mum,” says Jo.

“Are you hungry?”

“Jist!” says Jo.

“What’s gone of your father and your mother, eh?”

Jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified. For this orphan charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting has patted him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his life that any decent hand has been so laid upon him.

“I never know’d nothink about ’em,” says Jo.

“No more didn’t I of mine,” cries Guster. She is repressing symptoms favourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at something and vanishes down the stairs.

“Jo,” whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the step.

“Here I am, Mr. Snagsby!”

“I didn’t know you were gone—there’s another half-crown, Jo. It was quite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other night when we were out together. It would breed trouble. You can’t be too quiet, Jo.”

“I am fly, master!”

And so, good night.

A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-stationer to the room he came from and glides higher up. And henceforth he begins, go where he will, to be attended by another shadow than his own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his own. And into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may pass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware! For the watchful Mrs. Snagsby is there too—bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of his shadow.

Librivox Recording: Chapter 25