Bleak House
him; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner that
I was glad of the opportunity. “I remember faces very well.”
“So do I, miss!” he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of
his dark eyes and broad forehead. “Humph! What set me off, now, upon
that!”
His once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by
his efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his
relief.
“Have you many pupils, Mr. George?”
“They vary in their number, sir. Mostly they’re but a small lot to
live by.”
“And what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?”
“All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to
’prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and show
themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of
course, but THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open.”
“People don’t come with grudges and schemes of finishing their
practice with live targets, I hope?” said my guardian, smiling.
“Not much of that, sir, though that HAS happened. Mostly they come
for skill—or idleness. Six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. I
beg your pardon,” said Mr. George, sitting stiffly upright and
squaring an elbow on each knee, “but I believe you’re a Chancery
suitor, if I have heard correct?”
“I am sorry to say I am.”
“I have had one of YOUR compatriots in my time, sir.”
“A Chancery suitor?” returned my guardian. “How was that?”
“Why, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being
knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post,” said Mr.
George, “that he got out of sorts. I don’t believe he had any idea of
taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and
violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away
till he was red hot. One day I said to him when there was nobody by
and he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, ‘If this
practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don’t
altogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of
mind; I’d rather you took to something else.’ I was on my guard for a
blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part
and left off directly. We shook hands and struck up a sort of
friendship.”
“What was that man?” asked my guardian in a new tone of interest.
“Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer before they made a
baited bull of him,” said Mr. George.
“Was his name Gridley?”
“It was, sir.”
Mr. George directed another succession of quick bright glances at me
as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the
coincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name.
He made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he
called my condescension.
“I don’t know,” he said as he looked at me, “what it is that sets me
off again—but—bosh! What’s my head running against!” He passed one
of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to sweep the broken
thoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward, with one arm
akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at
the ground.
“I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Gridley
into new troubles and that he is in hiding,” said my guardian.
“So I am told, sir,” returned Mr. George, still musing and looking on
the ground. “So I am told.”
“You don’t know where?”
“No, sir,” returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out
of his reverie. “I can’t say anything about him. He will be worn out
soon, I expect. You may file a strong man’s heart away for a good
many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last.”
Richard’s entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. George rose, made me
another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and
strode heavily out of the room.
This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard’s departure. We
had no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing
early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when
he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being
again expected to come on that day, Richard proposed to me that we
should go down to the court and hear what passed. As it was his last
day, and he was eager to go, and I had never been there, I gave my
consent and we walked down to Westminster, where the court was then
sitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements concerning the letters
that Richard was to write to me and the letters that I was to write
to him and with a great many hopeful projects. My guardian knew where
we were going and therefore was not with us.
When we came to the court, there was the Lord Chancellor—the same
whom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln’s Inn—sitting in
great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a
red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little
garden, which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was a
long row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at
their feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and
gowns—some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody paying
much attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor leaned back in
his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and his
forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present dozed;
some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups:
all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very
unconcerned, and extremely comfortable.
To see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the roughness
of the suitors’ lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and
ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it
represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was
raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to
day, and year to year, in such good order and composure; to behold
the Lord Chancellor and the whole array of practitioners under him
looking at one another and at the spectators as if nobody had ever
heard that all over England the name in which they were assembled was
a bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contempt, and
indignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little
short of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one—this
was so curious and self-contradictory to me, who had no experience of
it, that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I
sat where Richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me;
but there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor
little Miss Flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at
it.
Miss Flite soon espied us and came to where we sat. She gave me a
gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much gratification
and pride, its principal attractions. Mr. Kenge also came to speak to
us and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the
bland modesty of a proprietor. It was not a very good day for a
visit, he said; he would have preferred the first day of term; but it
was imposing, it was imposing.
When we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress—if I
may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion—seemed to die out
of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to
come, to any result. The Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of
papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody said,
“Jarndyce and Jarndyce.” Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and
a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great
heaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of papers.
I think it came on “for further directions”—about some bill of
costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough.
But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were “in
it,” and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I.
They chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and
explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way,
and some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely
proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more
buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle
entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. After an
hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut
short, it was “referred back for the present,” as Mr. Kenge said, and
the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished
bringing them in.
I glanced at Richard on the termination of these hopeless proceedings
and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome young face. “It
can’t last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!” was all he
said.
I had seen Mr. Guppy bringing in papers and arranging them for Mr.
Kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered
me desirous to get out of the court. Richard had given me his arm and
was taking me away when Mr. Guppy came up.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Carstone,” said he in a whisper, “and Miss
Summerson’s also, but there’s a lady here, a friend of mine, who
knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands.” As he
spoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from
my remembrance, Mrs. Rachael of my godmother’s house.
“How do you do, Esther?” said she. “Do you recollect me?”
I gave her my hand and told her yes and that she was very little
altered.
“I wonder you remember those times, Esther,” she returned with her
old asperity. “They are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you, and
glad you are not too proud to know me.” But indeed she seemed
disappointed that I was not.
“Proud, Mrs. Rachael!” I remonstrated.
“I am married, Esther,” she returned, coldly correcting me, “and am
Mrs. Chadband. Well! I wish you good day, and I hope you’ll do well.”
Mr. Guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a
sigh in my ear and elbowed his own and Mrs. Rachael’s way through the
confused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which we
were in the midst of and which the change in the business had brought
together. Richard and I were making our way through it, and I was yet
in the first chill of the late unexpected recognition when I saw,
coming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person than Mr.
George. He made nothing of the people about him as he tramped on,
staring over their heads into the body of the court.
“George!” said Richard as I called his attention to him.
“You are well met, sir,” he returned. “And you, miss. Could you point
a person out for me, I want? I don’t understand these places.”
Turning as he spoke and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we
were out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain.
“There’s a little cracked old woman,” he began, “that—”
I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by me, having kept
beside me all the time and having called the attention of several of
her legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion) by
whispering in their ears, “Hush! Fitz Jarndyce on my left!”
“Hem!” said Mr. George. “You remember, miss, that we passed some
conversation on a certain man this morning? Gridley,” in a low
whisper behind his hand.
“Yes,” said I.
“He is hiding at my place. I couldn’t mention it. Hadn’t his
authority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her.
He says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost as
good as a friend to him here. I came down to look for her, for when I
sat by Gridley this afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the
muffled drums.”
“Shall I tell her?” said I.
“Would you be so good?” he returned with a glance of something like
apprehension at Miss Flite. “It’s a providence I met you, miss; I