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

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,” sald 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.”