Bleak House, Charles Dickens [the beginning after the end novel read .txt] 📗

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.