Bleak House
though a little flighty. On the other hand, you can’t admit but what
it’s natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging over our
heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. Come! Forget and
forgive all round!”
Mrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her
husband the other, Mr. George gives each of them one of his and holds
them while he speaks.
“I do assure you both, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to discharge
this obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together has
gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly enough
here, Phil and I. But the gallery don’t quite do what was expected of
it, and it’s not—in short, it’s not the mint. It was wrong in me to
take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step,
and I thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you’ll try to
overlook my having such expectations, and upon my soul, I am very
much obliged to you, and very much ashamed of myself.” With these
concluding words, Mr. George gives a shake to each of the hands he
holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace or two in a
broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a final confession
and were immediately going to be shot with all military honours.
“George, hear me out!” says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. “Old
girl, go on!”
Mr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to
observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that
it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr.
Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold
harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr. George, entirely
assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr. Bagnet to
the enemy’s camp.
“Don’t you mind a woman’s hasty word, George,” says Mrs. Bagnet,
patting him on the shoulder. “I trust my old Lignum to you, and I am
sure you’ll bring him through it.”
The trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring
Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak,
basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of
her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of
mollifying Mr. Smallweed.
Whether there are two people in England less likely to come
satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Smallweed than Mr.
George and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned.
Also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square
shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same limits
two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the Smallweedy
affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity through the
streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr. Bagnet, observing
his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to refer
to Mrs. Bagnet’s late sally.
“George, you know the old girl—she’s as sweet and as mild as milk.
But touch her on the children—or myself—and she’s off like
gunpowder.”
“It does her credit, Mat!”
“George,” says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, “the old
girl—can’t do anything—that don’t do her credit. More or less. I
never say so. Discipline must be maintained.”
“She’s worth her weight in gold,” says the trooper.
“In gold?” says Mr. Bagnet. “I’ll tell you what. The old girl’s
weight—is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight—in any
metal—for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl’s metal is
far more precious—than the preciousest metal. And she’s ALL metal!”
“You are right, Mat!”
“When she took me—and accepted of the ring—she ’listed under me and
the children—heart and head; for life. She’s that earnest,” says Mr.
Bagnet, “and true to her colours—that, touch us with a finger—and
she turns out—and stands to her arms. If the old girl fires
wide—once in a way—at the call of duty—look over it, George. For
she’s loyal!”
“Why, bless her, Mat,” returns the trooper, “I think the higher of
her for it!”
“You are right!” says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm, though
without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. “Think as high of
the old girl—as the rock of Gibraltar—and still you’ll be thinking
low—of such merits. But I never own to it before her. Discipline
must be maintained.”
These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather
Smallweed’s house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who,
having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but
indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she
consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred
to give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words
on her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. Thus
privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with his feet in the
drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath and Mrs.
Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is not to sing.
“My dear friend,” says Grandfather Smallweed with those two lean
affectionate arms of his stretched forth. “How de do? How de do? Who
is our friend, my dear friend?”
“Why this,” returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at
first, “is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours,
you know.”
“Oh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely!” The old man looks at him under his hand.
“Hope you’re well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. George! Military air,
sir!”
No chairs being offered, Mr. George brings one forward for Bagnet and
one for himself. They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no power of
bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose.
“Judy,” says Mr. Smallweed, “bring the pipe.”
“Why, I don’t know,” Mr. George interposes, “that the young woman
need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not
inclined to smoke it to-day.”
“Ain’t you?” returns the old man. “Judy, bring the pipe.”
“The fact is, Mr. Smallweed,” proceeds George, “that I find myself in
rather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that your
friend in the city has been playing tricks.”
“Oh, dear no!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “He never does that!”
“Don’t he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might be
HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter.”
Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of the
letter.
“What does it mean?” asks Mr. George.
“Judy,” says the old man. “Have you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did
you say what does it mean, my good friend?”
“Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed,” urges the trooper,
constraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he
can, holding the open letter in one hand and resting the broad
knuckles of the other on his thigh, “a good lot of money has passed
between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are
both well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am
prepared to do the usual thing which I have done regularly and to
keep this matter going. I never got a letter like this from you
before, and I have been a little put about by it this morning,
because here’s my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had none of
the money—”
“I DON’T know it, you know,” says the old man quietly.
“Why, con-found you—it, I mean—I tell you so, don’t I?”
“Oh, yes, you tell me so,” returns Grandfather Smallweed. “But I
don’t know it.”
“Well!” says the trooper, swallowing his fire. “I know it.”
Mr. Smallweed replies with excellent temper, “Ah! That’s quite
another thing!” And adds, “But it don’t matter. Mr. Bagnet’s
situation is all one, whether or no.”
The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair
comfortably and to propitiate Mr. Smallweed by taking him upon his
own terms.
“That’s just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here’s Matthew
Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see, that makes his
good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for whereas I’m a
harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence
come natural to, why he’s a steady family man, don’t you see? Now,
Mr. Smallweed,” says the trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds
in his soldierly mode of doing business, “although you and I are good
friends enough in a certain sort of a way, I am well aware that I
can’t ask you to let my friend Bagnet off entirely.”
“Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. George.”
(There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed
to-day.)
“And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as
your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!”
“Ha ha ha!” echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard manner
and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet’s natural gravity
is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man.
“Come!” says the sanguine George. “I am glad to find we can be
pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here’s my friend
Bagnet, and here am I. We’ll settle the matter on the spot, if you
please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you’ll ease my friend
Bagnet’s mind, and his family’s mind, a good deal if you’ll just
mention to him what our understanding is.”
Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, “Oh, good
gracious! Oh!” Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found
to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin
has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr.
Bagnet’s gravity becomes yet more profound.
“But I think you asked me, Mr. George”—old Smallweed, who all this
time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now—“I think you
asked me, what did the letter mean?”
“Why, yes, I did,” returns the trooper in his off-hand way, “but I
don’t care to know particularly, if it’s all correct and pleasant.”
Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper’s
head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.
“That’s what it means, my dear friend. I’ll smash you. I’ll crumble
you. I’ll powder you. Go to the devil!”
The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet’s gravity
has now attained its profoundest point.
“Go to the devil!” repeats the old man. “I’ll have no more of your
pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You’re an independent dragoon,
too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before)
and show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend,
there’s a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these
blusterers out! Call in help if they don’t go. Put ’em out!”
He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on
the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his
amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is
instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr.
George awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr. Bagnet, in a perfect
abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window
like a sentry and looks in every time he passes, apparently revolving
something in his mind.
“Come, Mat,” says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, “we must
try the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?”
Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour,
replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, “If my
old girl had been here—I’d have told him!” Having so discharged
himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and
marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.
When they present themselves in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Mr. Tulkinghorn
is engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all willing to see them,
for when they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his bell
being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings
forth no more encouraging message than that Mr. Tulkinghorn has