Bleak House
have half a million of his signatures, I think! But you,”
breathlessly recovering his mildness of speech as Judy re-adjusts the
cap on his skittle-ball of a head, “you, my dear Mr. George, are
likely to have some letter or paper that would suit the purpose.
Anything would suit the purpose, written in the hand.”
“Some writing in that hand,” says the trooper, pondering; “may be, I
have.”
“My dearest friend!”
“May be, I have not.”
“Ho!” says Grandfather Smallweed, crest-fallen.
“But if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make a
cartridge without knowing why.”
“Sir, I have told you why. My dear Mr. George, I have told you why.”
“Not enough,” says the trooper, shaking his head. “I must know more,
and approve it.”
“Then, will you come to the lawyer? My dear friend, will you come and
see the gentleman?” urges Grandfather Smallweed, pulling out a lean
old silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. “I told him
it was probable I might call upon him between ten and eleven this
forenoon, and it’s now half after ten. Will you come and see the
gentleman, Mr. George?”
“Hum!” says he gravely. “I don’t mind that. Though why this should
concern you so much, I don’t know.”
“Everything concerns me that has a chance in it of bringing anything
to light about him. Didn’t he take us all in? Didn’t he owe us
immense sums, all round? Concern me? Who can anything about him
concern more than me? Not, my dear friend,” says Grandfather
Smallweed, lowering his tone, “that I want YOU to betray anything.
Far from it. Are you ready to come, my dear friend?”
“Aye! I’ll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know.”
“No, my dear Mr. George; no.”
“And you mean to say you’re going to give me a lift to this place,
wherever it is, without charging for it?” Mr. George inquires,
getting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves.
This pleasantry so tickles Mr. Smallweed that he laughs, long and
low, before the fire. But ever while he laughs, he glances over his
paralytic shoulder at Mr. George and eagerly watches him as he
unlocks the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the
gallery, looks here and there upon the higher shelves, and ultimately
takes something out with a rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it
in his breast. Then Judy pokes Mr. Smallweed once, and Mr. Smallweed
pokes Judy once.
“I am ready,” says the trooper, coming back. “Phil, you can carry
this old gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him.”
“Oh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!” says Mr. Smallweed. “He’s so
very prompt! Are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy man?”
Phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, sidles away,
tightly hugged by the now speechless Mr. Smallweed, and bolts along
the passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old
gentleman to the nearest volcano. His shorter trust, however,
terminating at the cab, he deposits him there; and the fair Judy
takes her place beside him, and the chair embellishes the roof, and
Mr. George takes the vacant place upon the box.
Mr. George is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from time
to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind him, where
the grim Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his
cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and
looking upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression
of being jolted in the back.
CHAPTER XXVII
More Old Soldiers Than One
Mr. George has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for
their destination is Lincoln’s Inn Fields. When the driver stops his
horses, Mr. George alights, and looking in at the window, says,
“What, Mr. Tulkinghorn’s your man, is he?”
“Yes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr. George?”
“Why, I have heard of him—seen him too, I think. But I don’t know
him, and he don’t know me.”
There ensues the carrying of Mr. Smallweed upstairs, which is done to
perfection with the trooper’s help. He is borne into Mr.
Tulkinghorn’s great room and deposited on the Turkey rug before the
fire. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will be
back directly. The occupant of the pew in the hall, having said thus
much, stirs the fire and leaves the triumvirate to warm themselves.
Mr. George is mightily curious in respect of the room. He looks up at
the painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books, contemplates
the portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on the
boxes.
“‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,’” Mr. George reads thoughtfully.
“Ha! ‘Manor of Chesney Wold.’ Humph!” Mr. George stands looking at
these boxes a long while—as if they were pictures—and comes back to
the fire repeating, “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and Manor of
Chesney Wold, hey?”
“Worth a mint of money, Mr. George!” whispers Grandfather Smallweed,
rubbing his legs. “Powerfully rich!”
“Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?”
“This gentleman, this gentleman.”
“So I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I’ll hold a wager. Not
bad quarters, either,” says Mr. George, looking round again. “See the
strong-box yonder!”
This reply is cut short by Mr. Tulkinghorn’s arrival. There is no
change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in his
hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry.
In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually
not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have
warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr. Tulkinghorn,
after all, if everything were known.
“Good morning, Mr. Smallweed, good morning!” he says as he comes in.
“You have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit down, sergeant.”
As Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he
looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper
stands and says within himself perchance, “You’ll do, my friend!”
“Sit down, sergeant,” he repeats as he comes to his table, which is
set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. “Cold and raw
this morning, cold and raw!” Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars,
alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from
behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a
little semicircle before him.
“Now, I can feel what I am about” (as perhaps he can in two senses),
“Mr. Smallweed.” The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Judy to bear
his part in the conversation. “You have brought our good friend the
sergeant, I see.”
“Yes, sir,” returns Mr. Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer’s
wealth and influence.
“And what does the sergeant say about this business?”
“Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed with a tremulous wave of his
shrivelled hand, “this is the gentleman, sir.”
Mr. George salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright and
profoundly silent—very forward in his chair, as if the full
complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him.
Mr. Tulkinghorn proceeds, “Well, George—I believe your name is
George?”
“It is so, Sir.”
“What do you say, George?”
“I ask your pardon, sir,” returns the trooper, “but I should wish to
know what YOU say?”
“Do you mean in point of reward?”
“I mean in point of everything, sir.”
This is so very trying to Mr. Smallweed’s temper that he suddenly
breaks out with “You’re a brimstone beast!” and as suddenly asks
pardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the
tongue by saying to Judy, “I was thinking of your grandmother, my
dear.”
“I supposed, sergeant,” Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one
side of his chair and crosses his legs, “that Mr. Smallweed might
have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest
compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and
were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services,
and were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?”
“Yes, sir, that is so,” says Mr. George with military brevity.
“Therefore you may happen to have in your possession
something—anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders,
a letter, anything—in Captain Hawdon’s writing. I wish to compare
his writing with some that I have. If you can give me the
opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four,
five, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say.”
“Noble, my dear friend!” cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his
eyes.
“If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can
demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing, against
your inclination—though I should prefer to have it.”
Mr. George sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the
painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Smallweed
scratches the air.
“The question is,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued,
uninterested way, “first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon’s
writing?”
“First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon’s writing, sir,” repeats
Mr. George.
“Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?”
“Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it,
sir,” repeats Mr. George.
“Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that,”
says Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written
paper tied together.
“Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so,” repeats Mr. George.
All three repetitions Mr. George pronounces in a mechanical manner,
looking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at
the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him
for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but
continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation.
“Well?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “What do you say?”
“Well, sir,” replies Mr. George, rising erect and looking immense, “I
would rather, if you’ll excuse me, have nothing to do with this.”
Mr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, “Why not?”
“Why, sir,” returns the trooper. “Except on military compulsion, I am
not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in
Scotland a ne’er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand
any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr.
Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of
this kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my
sensation,” says Mr. George, looking round upon the company, “at the
present moment.”
With that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on
the lawyer’s table and three strides backward to resume his former
station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground
and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to
prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever.
Under this provocation, Mr. Smallweed’s favourite adjective of
disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words “my
dear friend” with the monosyllable “brim,” thus converting the
possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment in
his speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear
friend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so
eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace,
confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable. Mr.
Tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, “You are the
best judge of your own interest, sergeant.” “Take care you do no harm
by this.” “Please yourself, please yourself.” “If you know what you
mean, that’s quite enough.” These he utters with an appearance of
perfect indifference as he looks over the papers on his table and
prepares to write a letter.