Bleak House
not at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is true, I
say it’s true; and when they tell me, ‘whatever you say will be
used,’ I tell them I don’t mind that; I mean it to be used. If they
can’t make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to
do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it’s
worth nothing to me.”
Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table
and finished what he had to say.
“I thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention,
and many times more for your interest. That’s the plain state of the
matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt
broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my
duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap
pretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being
seized as a murderer—it don’t take a rover who has knocked about so
much as myself so very long to recover from a crash—I worked my way
round to what you find me now. As such I shall remain. No relations
will be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me, and—and that’s all
I’ve got to say.”
The door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less
prepossessing appearance at first sight and a weather-tanned,
bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance,
had been exceedingly attentive to all Mr. George had said. Mr. George
had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but
without any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. He
now shook them cordially by the hand and said, “Miss Summerson and
gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this
is his wife, Mrs. Bagnet.”
Mr. Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a
curtsy.
“Real good friends of mine, they are,” said Mr. George. “It was at
their house I was taken.”
“With a second-hand wiolinceller,” Mr. Bagnet put in, twitching his
head angrily. “Of a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object
to.”
“Mat,” said Mr. George, “you have heard pretty well all I have been
saying to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your
approval?”
Mr. Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. “Old
girl,” said he. “Tell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval.”
“Why, George,” exclaimed Mrs. Bagnet, who had been unpacking her
basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea
and sugar, and a brown loaf, “you ought to know it don’t. You ought
to know it’s enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You won’t be
got off this way, and you won’t be got off that way—what do you mean
by such picking and choosing? It’s stuff and nonsense, George.”
“Don’t be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs. Bagnet,” said the
trooper lightly.
“Oh! Bother your misfortunes,” cried Mrs. Bagnet, “if they don’t make
you more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my
life to hear a man talk folly as I have been to hear you talk this
day to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks
should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman
recommended them to you.”
“This is a very sensible woman,” said my guardian. “I hope you will
persuade him, Mrs. Bagnet.”
“Persuade him, sir?” she returned. “Lord bless you, no. You don’t
know George. Now, there!” Mrs. Bagnet left her basket to point him
out with both her bare brown hands. “There he stands! As self-willed
and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human
creature under heaven out of patience! You could as soon take up and
shoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that
man when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there. Why,
don’t I know him!” cried Mrs. Bagnet. “Don’t I know you, George! You
don’t mean to set up for a new character with ME after all these
years, I hope?”
Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband,
who shook his head at the trooper several times as a silent
recommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs. Bagnet looked at
me; and I understood from the play of her eyes that she wished me to
do something, though I did not comprehend what.
“But I have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years,”
said Mrs. Bagnet as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork,
looking at me again; “and when ladies and gentlemen know you as well
as I do, they’ll give up talking to you too. If you are not too
headstrong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is.”
“I accept it with many thanks,” returned the trooper.
“Do you though, indeed?” said Mrs. Bagnet, continuing to grumble on
good-humouredly. “I’m sure I’m surprised at that. I wonder you don’t
starve in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps
you’ll set your mind upon THAT next.” Here she again looked at me,
and I now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns,
that she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside
the prison. Communicating this by similar means to my guardian and
Mr. Woodcourt, I rose.
“We hope you will think better of it, Mr. George,” said I, “and we
shall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable.”
“More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can’t find me,” he returned.
“But more persuadable we can, I hope,” said I. “And let me entreat
you to consider that the clearing up of this mystery and the
discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the last
importance to others besides yourself.”
He heard me respectfully but without much heeding these words, which
I spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he
was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure,
which seemed to catch his attention all at once.
“’Tis curious,” said he. “And yet I thought so at the time!”
My guardian asked him what he meant.
“Why, sir,” he answered, “when my ill fortune took me to the dead
man’s staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like
Miss Summerson’s go by me in the dark that I had half a mind to speak
to it.”
For an instant I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since
and hope I shall never feel again.
“It came downstairs as I went up,” said the trooper, “and crossed the
moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep
fringe to it. However, it has nothing to do with the present subject,
excepting that Miss Summerson looked so like it at the moment that it
came into my head.”
I cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after
this; it is enough that the vague duty and obligation I had felt upon
me from the first of following the investigation was, without my
distinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased, and that I
was indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my
being afraid.
We three went out of the prison and walked up and down at some short
distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not
waited long when Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet came out too and quickly joined
us.
There was a tear in each of Mrs. Bagnet’s eyes, and her face was
flushed and hurried. “I didn’t let George see what I thought about
it, you know, miss,” was her first remark when she came up, “but he’s
in a bad way, poor old fellow!”
“Not with care and prudence and good help,” said my guardian.
“A gentleman like you ought to know best, sir,” returned Mrs. Bagnet,
hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak, “but I am
uneasy for him. He has been so careless and said so much that he
never meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as
Lignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have
happened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought
forward to speak against him, and Bucket is so deep.”
“With a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a
boy,” Mr. Bagnet added with great solemnity.
“Now, I tell you, miss,” said Mrs. Bagnet; “and when I say miss, I
mean all! Just come into the corner of the wall and I’ll tell you!”
Mrs. Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place and was at first
too breathless to proceed, occasioning Mr. Bagnet to say, “Old girl!
Tell ’em!”
“Why, then, miss,” the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her
bonnet for more air, “you could as soon move Dover Castle as move
George on this point unless you had got a new power to move him with.
And I have got it!”
“You are a jewel of a woman,” said my guardian. “Go on!”
“Now, I tell you, miss,” she proceeded, clapping her hands in her
hurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, “that what he
says concerning no relations is all bosh. They don’t know of him, but
he does know of them. He has said more to me at odd times than to
anybody else, and it warn’t for nothing that he once spoke to my
Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers’ heads. For fifty
pounds he had seen his mother that day. She’s alive and must be
brought here straight!”
Instantly Mrs. Bagnet put some pins into her mouth and began pinning
up her skirts all round a little higher than the level of her grey
cloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity.
“Lignum,” said Mrs. Bagnet, “you take care of the children, old man,
and give me the umbrella! I’m away to Lincolnshire to bring that old
lady here.”
“But, bless the woman,” cried my guardian with his hand in his
pocket, “how is she going? What money has she got?”
Mrs. Bagnet made another application to her skirts and brought forth
a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings
and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction.
“Never you mind for me, miss. I’m a soldier’s wife and accustomed to
travel my own way. Lignum, old boy,” kissing him, “one for yourself,
three for the children. Now I’m away into Lincolnshire after George’s
mother!”
And she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another
lost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a
sturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone.
“Mr. Bagnet,” said my guardian. “Do you mean to let her go in that
way?”
“Can’t help it,” he returned. “Made her way home once from another
quarter of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella.
Whatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says,
I’LL do it. She does it.”
“Then she is as honest and genuine as she looks,” rejoined my
guardian, “and it is impossible to say more for her.”
“She’s Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion,” said Mr. Bagnet,
looking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. “And there’s
not such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must
be maintained.”
CHAPTER LIII
The Track
Mr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together
under existing circumstances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this
pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems
to rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears,
and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins
him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent;
he shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his
destruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple invariably predict
that when Mr. Bucket and that finger are in much conference, a
terrible avenger will be heard of before long.
Otherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the
whole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the
follies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast number of houses and
strolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather
languishing for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition