Bleak House, Charles Dickens [early reader books TXT] 📗

got to scratch me? She must be got to do it somehow.”

“Scratch you out of her will, I think you mean?”

“Of course I do. In short,” says the trooper, folding his arms more resolutely yet, “I mean⁠—to⁠—scratch me!”

“My dear George,” returns his brother, “is it so indispensable that you should undergo that process?”

“Quite! Absolutely! I couldn’t be guilty of the meanness of coming back without it. I should never be safe not to be off again. I have not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of your rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago! If I am to remain and hold up my head, I must be scratched. Come. You are a man of celebrated penetration and intelligence, and you can tell me how it’s to be brought about.”

“I can tell you, George,” replies the ironmaster deliberately, “how it is not to be brought about, which I hope may answer the purpose as well. Look at our mother, think of her, recall her emotion when she recovered you. Do you believe there is a consideration in the world that would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son? Do you believe there is any chance of her consent, to balance against the outrage it would be to her (loving dear old lady!) to propose it? If you do, you are wrong. No, George! You must make up your mind to remain unscratched, I think.” There is an amused smile on the ironmaster’s face as he watches his brother, who is pondering, deeply disappointed. “I think you may manage almost as well as if the thing were done, though.”

“How, brother?”

“Being bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the misfortune to inherit in any way you like, you know.”

“That’s true!” says the trooper, pondering again. Then he wistfully asks, with his hand on his brother’s, “Would you mind mentioning that, brother, to your wife and family?”

“Not at all.”

“Thank you. You wouldn’t object to say, perhaps, that although an undoubted vagabond, I am a vagabond of the harum-scarum order, and not of the mean sort?”

The ironmaster, repressing his amused smile, assents.

“Thank you. Thank you. It’s a weight off my mind,” says the trooper with a heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms and puts a hand on each leg, “though I had set my heart on being scratched, too!”

The brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a certain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the ways of the world is all on the trooper’s side.

“Well,” he proceeds, throwing off his disappointment, “next and last, those plans of mine. You have been so brotherly as to propose to me to fall in here and take my place among the products of your perseverance and sense. I thank you heartily. It’s more than brotherly, as I said before, and I thank you heartily for it,” shaking him a long time by the hand. “But the truth is, brother, I am a⁠—I am a kind of a weed, and it’s too late to plant me in a regular garden.”

“My dear George,” returns the elder, concentrating his strong steady brow upon him and smiling confidently, “leave that to me, and let me try.”

George shakes his head. “You could do it, I have not a doubt, if anybody could; but it’s not to be done. Not to be done, sir! Whereas it so falls out, on the other hand, that I am able to be of some trifle of use to Sir Leicester Dedlock since his illness⁠—brought on by family sorrows⁠—and that he would rather have that help from our mother’s son than from anybody else.”

“Well, my dear George,” returns the other with a very slight shade upon his open face, “if you prefer to serve in Sir Leicester Dedlock’s household brigade⁠—”

“There it is, brother,” cries the trooper, checking him, with his hand upon his knee again; “there it is! You don’t take kindly to that idea; I don’t mind it. You are not used to being officered; I am. Everything about you is in perfect order and discipline; everything about me requires to be kept so. We are not accustomed to carry things with the same hand or to look at ’em from the same point. I don’t say much about my garrison manners because I found myself pretty well at my ease last night, and they wouldn’t be noticed here, I dare say, once and away. But I shall get on best at Chesney Wold, where there’s more room for a weed than there is here; and the dear old lady will be made happy besides. Therefore I accept of Sir Leicester Dedlock’s proposals. When I come over next year to give away the bride, or whenever I come, I shall have the sense to keep the household brigade in ambuscade and not to manoeuvre it on your ground. I thank you heartily again and am proud to think of the Rouncewells as they’ll be founded by you.”

“You know yourself, George,” says the elder brother, returning the grip of his hand, “and perhaps you know me better than I know myself. Take your way. So that we don’t quite lose one another again, take your way.”

“No fear of that!” returns the trooper. “Now, before I turn my horse’s head homewards, brother, I will ask you⁠—if you’ll be so good⁠—to look over a letter for me. I brought it with me to send from these parts, as Chesney Wold might be a painful name just now to the person it’s written to. I am not much accustomed to correspondence myself, and I am particular respecting this present letter because I want it to be both straightforward and delicate.”

Herewith he hands a letter, closely written in somewhat pale ink but in a neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as follows:

Miss Esther Summerson,

A communication having been made to me by Inspector Bucket of a letter to