Bleak House
than the interesting Judy, is tart and spare in her replies. These
sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that Miss Flite and her
birds are domiciled with a Mrs. Blinder, in Bell Yard, he repairs to
that neighbouring place, where Miss Flite (who rises early that she
may be punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend
the Chancellor) comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and
with open arms.
“My dear physician!” cries Miss Flite. “My meritorious,
distinguished, honourable officer!” She uses some odd expressions,
but is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can be—more so
than it often is. Allan, very patient with her, waits until she has
no more raptures to express, then points out Jo, trembling in a
doorway, and tells her how he comes there.
“Where can I lodge him hereabouts for the present? Now, you have a
fund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me.”
Miss Flite, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider;
but it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. Mrs. Blinder is
entirely let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley’s room.
“Gridley!” exclaims Miss Flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth
repetition of this remark. “Gridley! To be sure! Of course! My dear
physician! General George will help us out.”
It is hopeless to ask for any information about General George, and
would be, though Miss Flite had not already run upstairs to put on
her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with
her reticule of documents. But as she informs her physician in her
disjointed manner on coming down in full array that General George,
whom she often calls upon, knows her dear Fitz Jarndyce and takes a
great interest in all connected with her, Allan is induced to think
that they may be in the right way. So he tells Jo, for his
encouragement, that this walking about will soon be over now; and
they repair to the general’s. Fortunately it is not far.
From the exterior of George’s Shooting Gallery, and the long entry,
and the bare perspective beyond it, Allan Woodcourt augurs well. He
also descries promise in the figure of Mr. George himself, striding
towards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no
stock on, and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and
dumbbell, weightily asserting themselves through his light
shirt-sleeves.
“Your servant, sir,” says Mr. George with a military salute.
Good-humouredly smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp
hair, he then defers to Miss Flite, as, with great stateliness, and
at some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. He
winds it up with another “Your servant, sir!” and another salute.
“Excuse me, sir. A sailor, I believe?” says Mr. George.
“I am proud to find I have the air of one,” returns Allan; “but I am
only a sea-going doctor.”
“Indeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket
myself.”
Allan hopes Mr. George will forgive his intrusion the more readily on
that account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe,
which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing.
“You are very good, sir,” returns the trooper. “As I know by
experience that it’s not disagreeable to Miss Flite, and since it’s
equally agreeable to yourself—” and finishes the sentence by putting
it between his lips again. Allan proceeds to tell him all he knows
about Jo, unto which the trooper listens with a grave face.
“And that’s the lad, sir, is it?” he inquires, looking along the
entry to where Jo stands staring up at the great letters on the
whitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes.
“That’s he,” says Allan. “And, Mr. George, I am in this difficulty
about him. I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could
procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not
stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. The same
objection applies to a workhouse, supposing I had the patience to be
evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to
get him into one, which is a system that I don’t take kindly to.”
“No man does, sir,” returns Mr. George.
“I am convinced that he would not remain in either place, because he
is possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered
him to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person
to be everywhere, and cognizant of everything.”
“I ask your pardon, sir,” says Mr. George. “But you have not
mentioned that party’s name. Is it a secret, sir?”
“The boy makes it one. But his name is Bucket.”
“Bucket the detective, sir?”
“The same man.”
“The man is known to me, sir,” returns the trooper after blowing out
a cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, “and the boy is so far
correct that he undoubtedly is a—rum customer.” Mr. George smokes
with a profound meaning after this and surveys Miss Flite in silence.
“Now, I wish Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson at least to know that
this Jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared, and to have it
in their power to speak with him if they should desire to do so.
Therefore I want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor
lodging kept by decent people where he would be admitted. Decent
people and Jo, Mr. George,” says Allan, following the direction of
the trooper’s eyes along the entry, “have not been much acquainted,
as you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to know any one in
this neighbourhood who would receive him for a while on my paying for
him beforehand?”
As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man
standing at the trooper’s elbow and looking up, with an oddly twisted
figure and countenance, into the trooper’s face. After a few more
puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man,
and the little man winks up at the trooper.
“Well, sir,” says Mr. George, “I can assure you that I would
willingly be knocked on the head at any time if it would be at all
agreeable to Miss Summerson, and consequently I esteem it a privilege
to do that young lady any service, however small. We are naturally in
the vagabond way here, sir, both myself and Phil. You see what the
place is. You are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the
same would meet your views. No charge made, except for rations. We
are not in a flourishing state of circumstances here, sir. We are
liable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a moment’s notice. However,
sir, such as the place is, and so long as it lasts, here it is at
your service.”
With a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr. George places the whole
building at his visitor’s disposal.
“I take it for granted, sir,” he adds, “you being one of the medical
staff, that there is no present infection about this unfortunate
subject?”
Allan is quite sure of it.
“Because, sir,” says Mr. George, shaking his head sorrowfully, “we
have had enough of that.”
His tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance.
“Still I am bound to tell you,” observes Allan after repeating his
former assurance, “that the boy is deplorably low and reduced and
that he may be—I do not say that he is—too far gone to recover.”
“Do you consider him in present danger, sir?” inquires the trooper.
“Yes, I fear so.”
“Then, sir,” returns the trooper in a decisive manner, “it appears to
me—being naturally in the vagabond way myself—that the sooner he
comes out of the street, the better. You, Phil! Bring him in!”
Mr. Squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command;
and the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought
in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle’s Tockahoopo Indians; he is not
one of Mrs. Jellyby’s lambs, being wholly unconnected with
Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he
is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made
article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a
common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely
filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in
him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English
soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts
that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the
sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing
interesting about thee.
He shuffles slowly into Mr. George’s gallery and stands huddled
together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know
that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he
is and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He
is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in
creation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor
of humanity.
“Look here, Jo!” says Allan. “This is Mr. George.”
Jo searches the floor for some time longer, then looks up for a
moment, and then down again.
“He is a kind friend to you, for he is going to give you lodging room
here.”
Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is supposed to be a bow. After
a little more consideration and some backing and changing of the foot
on which he rests, he mutters that he is “wery thankful.”
“You are quite safe here. All you have to do at present is to be
obedient and to get strong. And mind you tell us the truth here,
whatever you do, Jo.”
“Wishermaydie if I don’t, sir,” says Jo, reverting to his favourite
declaration. “I never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get
myself into no trouble. I never was in no other trouble at all, sir,
’sept not knowin’ nothink and starwation.”
“I believe it, now attend to Mr. George. I see he is going to speak
to you.”
“My intention merely was, sir,” observes Mr. George, amazingly broad
and upright, “to point out to him where he can lie down and get a
thorough good dose of sleep. Now, look here.” As the trooper speaks,
he conducts them to the other end of the gallery and opens one of the
little cabins. “There you are, you see! Here is a mattress, and here
you may rest, on good behaviour, as long as Mr., I ask your pardon,
sir”—he refers apologetically to the card Allan has given him—“Mr.
Woodcourt pleases. Don’t you be alarmed if you hear shots; they’ll be
aimed at the target, and not you. Now, there’s another thing I would
recommend, sir,” says the trooper, turning to his visitor. “Phil,
come here!”
Phil bears down upon them according to his usual tactics. “Here is a
man, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutter. Consequently, it
is to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this poor
creature. You do, don’t you, Phil?”
“Certainly and surely I do, guv’ner,” is Phil’s reply.
“Now I was thinking, sir,” says Mr. George in a martial sort of
confidence, as if he were giving his opinion in a council of war at a
drum-head, “that if this man was to take him to a bath and was to lay
out a few shillings in getting him one or two coarse articles—”
“Mr. George, my considerate friend,” returns Allan, taking out his
purse, “it is the very favour I would have asked.”
Phil Squod and Jo are sent out immediately on this work of
improvement. Miss Flite, quite enraptured by her success, makes the
best of her way to court, having great fears that otherwise her
friend the Chancellor may be uneasy about her or may give the
judgment she has so long expected in her absence, and observing
“which you know, my dear physician, and general, after so many years,
would be too absurdly unfortunate!” Allan takes the opportunity of
going out to procure some restorative medicines, and obtaining them
near at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up and down
the gallery, and to fall into step and walk with him.
“I take it, sir,” says Mr. George, “that you know Miss Summerson
pretty well?”