Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗

shut up among the same staring walls from year to year,

have had—as I have read—for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In

an arched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so

glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and

iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we found

the trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a bench

there and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn.

 

When he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread,

and there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still advanced,

putting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment.

 

“This is a load off my mind, I do assure you, miss and gentlemen,”

said he, saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long

breath. “And now I don’t so much care how it ends.”

 

He scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What with his coolness and

his soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard.

 

“This is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady

in,” said Mr. George, “but I know Miss Summerson will make the best

of it.” As he handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting,

I sat down, which seemed to give him great satisfaction.

 

“I thank you, miss,” said he.

 

“Now, George,” observed my guardian, “as we require no new

assurances on your part, so I believe we need give you none on

ours.”

 

“Not at all, sir. I thank you with all my heart. If I was not

innocent of this crime, I couldn’t look at you and keep my secret

to myself under the condescension of the present visit. I feel the

present visit very much. I am not one of the eloquent sort, but I

feel it, Miss Summerson and gentlemen, deeply.”

 

He laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest and bent his head

to us. Although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a

great amount of natural emotion by these simple means.

 

“First,” said my guardian, “can we do anything for your personal

comfort, George?”

 

“For which, sir?” he inquired, clearing his throat.

 

“For your personal comfort. Is there anything you want that would

lessen the hardship of this confinement?”

 

“Well, sir,” replied George, after a little cogitation, “I am

equally obliged to you, but tobacco being against the rules, I

can’t say that there is.”

 

“You will think of many little things perhaps, by and by.

Whenever you do, George, let us know.”

 

“Thank you, sir. Howsoever,” observed Mr. George with one of his

sunburnt smiles, “a man who has been knocking about the world in a

vagabond kind of a way as long as I have gets on well enough in a

place like the present, so far as that goes.”

 

“Next, as to your case,” observed my guardian.

 

“Exactly so, sir,” returned Mr. George, folding his arms upon his

breast with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity.

 

“How does it stand now?”

 

“Why, sir, it is under remand at present. Bucket gives me to

understand that he will probably apply for a series of remands from

time to time until the case is more complete. How it is to be made

more complete I don’t myself see, but I dare say Bucket will manage

it somehow.”

 

“Why, heaven save us, man,” exclaimed my guardian, surprised into

his old oddity and vehemence, “you talk of yourself as if you were

somebody else!”

 

“No offence, sir,” said Mr. George. “I am very sensible of your

kindness. But I don’t see how an innocent man is to make up his

mind to this kind of thing without knocking his head against the

walls unless he takes it in that point of view.”

 

“That is true enough to a certain extent,” returned my guardian,

softened. “But my good fellow, even an innocent man must take

ordinary precautions to defend himself.”

 

“Certainly, sir. And I have done so. I have stated to the

magistrates, ‘Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as

yourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is

perfectly true; I know no more about it.’ I intend to continue

stating that, sir. What more can I do? It’s the truth.”

 

“But the mere truth won’t do,” rejoined my guardian.

 

“Won’t it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!” Mr. George

good-humouredly observed.

 

“You must have a lawyer,” pursued my guardian. “We must engage a

good one for you.”

 

“I ask your pardon, sir,” said Mr. George with a step backward. “I

am equally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from

anything of that sort.”

 

“You won’t have a lawyer?”

 

“No, sir.” Mr. George shook his head in the most emphatic manner.

“I thank you all the same, sir, but—no lawyer!”

 

“Why not?”

 

“I don’t take kindly to the breed,” said Mr. George. “Gridley

didn’t. And—if you’ll excuse my saying so much—I should hardly

have thought you did yourself, sir.”

 

“That’s equity,” my guardian explained, a little at a loss; “that’s

equity, George.”

 

“Is it, indeed, sir?” returned the trooper in his off-hand manner.

“I am not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a

general way I object to the breed.”

 

Unfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one

massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a

picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as

ever I saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and

endeavoured to persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which

went so well with his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more

shaken by our representations that his place of confinement was.

 

“Pray think, once more, Mr. George,” said I. “Have you no wish in

reference to your case?”

 

“I certainly could wish it to be tried, miss,” he returned, “by

court-martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware.

If you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a

couple of minutes, miss, not more, I’ll endeavour to explain myself

as clearly as I can.”

 

He looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he

were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and

after a moment’s reflection went on.

 

“You see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody and

brought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My

shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such

property as I have—‘tis small—is turned this way and that till it

don’t know itself; and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don’t

particular complain of that. Though I am in these present quarters

through no immediately preceding fault of mine, I can very well

understand that if I hadn’t gone into the vagabond way in my youth,

this wouldn’t have happened. It HAS happened. Then comes the

question how to meet it.”

 

He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured

look and said apologetically, “I am such a short-winded talker that

I must think a bit.” Having thought a bit, he looked up again and

resumed.

 

“How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a

lawyer and had a pretty tight hold of me. I don’t wish to rake up

his ashes, but he had, what I should call if he was living, a devil

of a tight hold of me. I don’t like his trade the better for that.

If I had kept clear of his trade, I should have kept outside this

place. But that’s not what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him.

Suppose I really had discharged into his body any one of those

pistols recently fired off that Bucket has found at my place, and

dear me, might have found there any day since it has been my place.

What should I have done as soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a

lawyer.”

 

He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not

resume until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what

purpose opened, I will mention presently.

 

“I should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have

often read in the newspapers), ‘My client says nothing, my client

reserves his defence’: my client this, that, and t’other. Well,

‘tis not the custom of that breed to go straight, according to my

opinion, or to think that other men do. Say I am innocent and I

get a lawyer. He would be as likely to believe me guilty as not;

perhaps more. What would he do, whether or not? Act as if I was—

shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep circumstances

back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off perhaps!

But, Miss Summerson, do I care for getting off in that way; or

would I rather be hanged in my own way—if you’ll excuse my

mentioning anything so disagreeable to a lady?”

 

He had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further

necessity to wait a bit.

 

“I would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I

don’t intend to say,” looking round upon us with his powerful arms

akimbo and his dark eyebrows raised, “that I am more partial to

being hanged than another man. What I say is, I must come off

clear and full or 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.