Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 1 of 4
Go to Part 3 of 4

Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years
they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark--but
not their bite.

The day changes as it wears itself away and becomes dark and
drizzly. Jo fights it out at his crossing among the mud and
wheels, the horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum
to pay for the unsavoury shelter of Tom-all-Alone's. Twilight
comes on; gas begins to start up in the shops; the lamplighter,
with his ladder, runs along the margin of the pavement. A wretched
evening is beginning to close in.

In his chambers Mr. Tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to
the nearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. Gridley, a
disappointed suitor, has been here to-day and has been alarming.
We are not to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned
fellow shall be held to bail again. From the ceiling,
foreshortened Allegory, in the person of one impossible Roman
upside down, points with the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an
odd one) obtrusively toward the window. Why should Mr.
Tulkinghorn, for such no reason, look out of window? Is the hand
not always pointing there? So he does not look out of window.

And if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are
women enough in the world, Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks--too many; they
are at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the
matter of that, they create business for lawyers. What would it be
to see a woman going by, even though she were going secretly? They
are all secret. Mr. Tulkinghorn knows that very well.

But they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his
house behind, between whose plain dress and her refined manner
there is something exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an
upper servant by her attire, yet in her air and step, though both
are hurried and assumed--as far as she can assume in the muddy
streets, which she treads with an unaccustomed foot--she is a lady.
Her face is veiled, and still she sufficiently betrays herself to
make more than one of those who pass her look round sharply.

She never turns her head. Lady or servant, she has a purpose in
her and can follow it. She never turns her head until she comes to
the crossing where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her
and begs. Still, she does not turn her head until she has landed
on the other side. Then she slightly beckons to him and says,
"Come here!"

Jo follows her a pace or two into a quiet court.

"Are you the boy I've read of in the papers?" she asked behind her
veil.

"I don't know," says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, "nothink
about no papers. I don't know nothink about nothink at all."

"Were you examined at an inquest?"

"I don't know nothink about no--where I was took by the beadle, do
you mean?" says Jo. "Was the boy's name at the inkwhich Jo?"

"Yes."

"That's me!" says Jo.

"Come farther up."

"You mean about the man?" says Jo, following. "Him as wos dead?"

"Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living,
so very ill and poor?"

"Oh, jist!" says Jo.

"Did he look like--not like YOU?" says the woman with abhorrence.

"Oh, not so bad as me," says Jo. "I'm a reg'lar one I am! You
didn't know him, did you?"

"How dare you ask me if I knew him?"

"No offence, my lady," says Jo with much humility, for even he has
got at the suspicion of her being a lady.

"I am not a lady. I am a servant."

"You are a jolly servant!" says Jo without the least idea of saying
anything offensive, merely as a tribute of admiration.

"Listen and be silent. Don't talk to me, and stand farther from
me! Can you show me all those places that were spoken of in the
account I read? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the
place where you were taken to, and the place where he was buried?
Do you know the place where he was buried?"

Jo answers with a nod, having also nodded as each other place was
mentioned.

"Go before me and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite
to each, and don't speak to me unless I speak to you. Don't look
back. Do what I want, and I will pay you well."

Jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off
on his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider
their meaning; considers it satisfactory; and nods his ragged head.

"I'm fly," says Jo. "But fen larks, you know. Stow hooking it!"

"What does the horrible creature mean?" exclaims the servant,
recoiling from him.

"Stow cutting away, you know!" says Jo.

"I don't understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money
than you ever had in your life."

Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub,
takes his broom under his arm, and leads the way, passing deftly
with his bare feet over the hard stones and through the mud and
mire.

Cook's Court. Jo stops. A pause.

"Who lives here?"

"Him wot give him his writing and give me half a bull," says Jo in
a whisper without looking over his shoulder.

"Go on to the next."

Krook's house. Jo stops again. A longer pause.

"Who lives here?"

"HE lived here," Jo answers as before.

After a silence he is asked, "In which room?"

"In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this
corner. Up there! That's where I see him stritched out. This is
the public-ouse where I was took to."

"Go on to the next!"

It is a longer walk to the next, but Jo, relieved of his first
suspicions, sticks to the forms imposed upon him and does not look
round. By many devious ways, reeking with offence of many kinds,
they come to the little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp
(lighted now), and to the iron gate.

"He was put there," says Jo, holding to the bars and looking in.

"Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!"

"There!" says Jo, pointing. "Over yinder. Arnong them piles of
bones, and close to that there kitchin winder! They put him wery
nigh the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I
could unkiver it for you with my broom if the gate was open.
That's why they locks it, I s'pose," giving it a shake. "It's
always locked. Look at the rat!" cries Jo, excited. "Hi! Look!
There he goes! Ho! Into the ground!"

The servant shrinks into a corner, into a corner of that hideous
archway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and
putting out her two hands and passionately telling him to keep away
from her, for he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments.
Jo stands staring and is still staring when she recovers herself.

"Is this place of abomination consecrated ground?"

"I don't know nothink of consequential ground," says Jo, still
staring.

"Is it blessed?"

"Which?" says Jo, in the last degree amazed.

"Is it blessed?"

"I'm blest if I know," says Jo, staring more than ever; "but I
shouldn't think it warn't. Blest?" repeats Jo, something troubled
in his mind. "It an't done it much good if it is. Blest? I
should think it was t'othered myself. But I don't know nothink!"

The servant takes as little heed of what he says as she seems to
take of what she has said herself. She draws off her glove to get
some money from her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small
her hand is and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such
sparkling rings.

She drops a piece of money in his hand without touching it, and
shuddering as their hands approach. "Now," she adds, "show me the
spot again!"

Jo thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate,
and with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At
length, looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible,
he finds that he is alone.

His first proceeding is to hold the piece of money to the gas-light
and to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow--gold. His next
is to give it a one-sided bite at the edge as a test of its
quality. His next, to put it in his mouth for safety and to sweep
the step and passage with great care. His job done, he sets off
for Tom-all-Alone's, stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps
to produce the piece of gold and give it another one-sided bite as
a reassurance of its being genuine.

The Mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my
Lady goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir Leicester
is fidgety down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the
goat; he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell that the rain makes such a
monotonous pattering on the terrace that he can't read the paper
even by the fireside in his own snug dressing-room.

"Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the
house, my dear," says Mrs. Rouncewell to Rosa. "His dressing-room
is on my Lady's side. And in all these years I never heard the
step upon the Ghost's Walk more distinct than it is to-night!"

CHAPTER XVII

Esther's Narrative

Richard very often came to see us while we remained in London
(though he soon failed in his letter-writing), and with his quick
abilities, his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and
freshness, was always delightful. But though I liked him more and
more the better I knew him, I still felt more and more how much it
was to be regretted that he had been educated in no habits of
application and concentration. The system which had addressed him
in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of other
boys, all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to
dash through his tasks, always with fair credit and often with
distinction, but in a fitful, dazzling way that had confirmed his
reliance on those very qualities in himself which it had been most
desirable to direct and train. They were good qualities, without
which no high place can be meritoriously won, but like fire and
water, though excellent servants, they were very bad masters. If
they had been under Richard's direction, they would have been his
friends; but Richard being under their direction, they became his
enemies.

I write down these opinions not because I believe that this or any
other thing was so because I thought so, but only because I did
think so and I want to be quite candid about all I thought and did.
These were my thoughts about Richard. I thought I often observed
besides how right my guardian was in what he had said, and that the
uncertainties and delays of the Chancery suit had imparted to his
nature something of the careless spirit of a gamester who felt that
he was part of a great gaming system.

Mr. and Mrs. Bayham Badger coming one afternoon when my guardian
was not at home, in the course of conversation I naturally inquired
after Richard.

"Why, Mr. Carstone," said Mrs. Badger, "is very well and is, I
assure you, a great acquisition to our society. Captain Swosser
used to say of me that I was always better than land a-head and a
breeze a-starn to the midshipmen's mess when the purser's junk had
become as tough as the fore-topsel weather earings. It was his
naval way of mentioning generally that I was an acquisition to any
society. I may render the same tribute, I am sure, to Mr.
Carstone. But I--you won't think me premature if I mention it?"

I said no, as Mrs. Badger's insinuating tone seemed to require such
an answer.

"Nor Miss Clare?" said Mrs. Bayham Badger sweetly.

Ada said no, too, and looked uneasy.

"Why, you see, my dears," said Mrs. Badger, "--you'll excuse me
calling you my dears?"

We entreated Mrs. Badger not to mention it.

"Because you really are, if I may take the liberty of saying so,"
pursued Mrs. Badger, "so perfectly charming. You see, my dears,
that although I am still young--or Mr. Bayham Badger pays me the
compliment of saying so--"

"No," Mr. Badger called out like some one contradicting at a public
meeting. "Not at all!"

"Very well," smiled Mrs. Badger, "we will say still young."

"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Badger.

"My dears, though still young, I have had many opportunities of
observing young men. There were many such on board the dear old
Crippler, I assure you. After that, when I was with Captain
Swosser in the Mediterranean, I embraced every opportunity of
knowing and befriending the midshipmen under Captain Swosser's
command. YOU never heard them called the young gentlemen, my
dears, and probably wonld not understand allusions to their pipe-
claying their weekly accounts, but it is otherwise with me, for
blue water has been a second home to me, and I have been quite a
sailor. Again, with Professor Dingo."

"A man of European reputation," murmured Mr. Badger.

"When I lost my dear first and became the wife of my dear second,"
said Mrs. Badger, speaking of her former husbands as if they were
parts of a charade, "I still enjoyed opportunities of observing
youth. The class attendant on Professor Dingo's lectures was a
large one, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent
scientific man seeking herself in science the utmost consolation it
could impart, to throw our house open to the students as a kind of
Scientific Exchange. Every Tuesday evening there was lemonade and
a mixed biscuit for all who chose to partake of those refreshments.
And there was science to an unlimited extent."

"Remarkable assemblies those, Miss Summerson," said Mr. Badger
reverentially. "There must have been great intellectual friction
going on there under the auspices of such a man!"

"And now," pursued Mrs. Badger, "now that I am the wife of my dear
third, Mr. Badger, I still pursue those habits of observation which
were formed during the lifetime of Captain Swosser and adapted to
new and unexpected purposes during the lifetime of Professor Dingo.
I therefore have not come to the consideration of Mr. Carstone as a
neophyte. And yet I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he
has not chosen his profession advisedly."

Ada looked so very anxious now that I asked Mrs. Badger on what she
founded her supposition.

"My dear Miss Summerson," she replied, "on Mr. Carstone's character
and conduct. He is of such a very easy disposition that probably
he would never think it worthwhile to mention how he really feels,
but he feels languid about the profession. He has not that
positive interest in it which makes it his vocation. If he has any
decided impression in reference to it, I should say it was that it
is a tiresome pursuit. Now, this is not promising. Young men like
Mr. Allan Woodcourt who take it from a strong interest in all that
it can do will find some reward in it through a great deal of work
for a very little money and through years of considerable endurance
and disappointment. But I am quite convinced that this would never
be the case with Mr. Carstone."

"Does Mr. Badger think so too?" asked Ada timidly.

"Why," said Mr. Badger, "to tell the truth, Miss Clare, this view
of the matter had not occurred to me until Mrs. Badger mentioned
it. But when Mrs. Badger put it in that light, I naturally gave
great consideration to it, knowing that Mrs. Badger's mind, in
addition to its natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of
being formed by two such very distinguished (I will even say
illustrious) public men as Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy and
Professor Dingo. The conclusion at which I have arrived is--in
short, is Mrs. Badger's conclusion."

"It was a maxim of Captain Swosser's," said Mrs. Badger, "speaking
in his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you
cannot make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank,
you should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to
me that this maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the
nautical profession.

"To all professions," observed Mr. Badger. "It was admirably said
by Captain Swosser. Beautifully said."

"People objected to Professor Dingo when we were staying in the
north of Devon after our marriage," said Mrs. Badger, "that he
disfigured some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off
fragments of those edifices with his little geological hammer. But
the professor replied that he knew of no building save the Temple
of Science. The principle is the same, I think?"

"Precisely the same," said Mr. Badger. "Finely expressed! The
professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last
illness, when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his
little hammer under the pillow and chipping at the countenances of
the attendants. The ruling passion!"

Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and
Mrs. Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was
disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated
to us and that there was a great probability of its being sound.
We agreed to say nothing to Mr. Jarndyce until we had spoken to
Richard; and as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a
very serious talk with him.

So after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found
my darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him
thoroughly right in whatever he said.

"And how do you get on, Richard?" said I. I always sat down on the
other side of him. He made quite a sister of me.

"Oh! Well enough!" said Richard.

"He can't say better than that, Esther, can he?" cried my pet
triumphantly.

I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I
couldn't.

"Well enough?" I repeated.

"Yes," said Richard, "well enough. It's rather jog-trotty and
humdrum. But it'll do as well as anything else!"

"Oh! My dear Richard!" I remonstrated.

"What's the matter?" said Richard.

"Do as well as anything else!"

"I don't think there's any harm in that, Dame Durden," said Ada,
looking so confidingly at me across him; "because if it will do as
well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope."

"Oh, yes, I hope so," returned Richard, carelessly tossing his hair
from his forehead. "After all, it may be only a kind of probation
till our suit is--I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit.
Forbidden ground! Oh, yes, it's all right enough. Let us talk
about something else."

Ada would have done so willingly, and with a full persuasion that
we had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I
thought it would be useless to stop there, so I began again.

"No, but Richard," said I, "and my dear Ada! Consider how
important it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is
towards your cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in earnest
without any reservation. I think we had better talk about this,
really, Ada. It will be too late very soon."

"Oh, yes! We must talk about it!" said Ada. "But I think Richard
is right."

What was the use of my trying to look wise when she was so pretty,
and so engaging, and so fond of him!

"Mr. and Mrs. Badger were here yesterday, Richard," said I, "and
they seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the
profession."

"Did they though?" said Richard. "Oh! Well, that rather alters the
case, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not
have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I
don't care much about it. But, oh, it don't matter! It'll do as
well as anything else!"

"You hear him, Ada!" said I.

"The fact is," Richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half
jocosely, "it is not quite in my way. I don't take to it. And I
get too much of Mrs. Bayham Badger's first and second."

"I am sure THAT'S very natural!" cried Ada, quite delighted. "The
very thing we both said yesterday, Esther!"

"Then," pursued Richard, "it's monotonous, and to-day is too like
yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day."

"But I am afraid," said I, "this is an objection to all kinds of
application--to life itself, except under some very uncommon
circumstances."

"Do you think so?" returned Richard, still considering. "Perhaps!
Ha! Why, then, you know," he added, suddenly becoming gay again,
"we travel outside a circle to what I said just now. It'll do as
well as anything else. Oh, it's all right enough! Let us talk
about something else."

But even Ada, with her loving face--and if it had seemed innocent
and trusting when I first saw it in that memorable November fog,
how much more did it seem now when I knew her innocent and trusting
heart--even Ada shook her head at this and looked serious. So I
thought it a good opportunity to hint to Richard that if he were
sometimes a little careless of himself, I was very sure he never
meant to be careless of Ada, and that it was a part of his
affectionate consideration for her not to slight the importance of
a step that might influence both their lives. This made him almost
grave.

"My dear Mother Hubbard," he said, "that's the very thing! I have
thought of that several times and have been quite angry with myself
for meaning to be so much in earnest and--somehow--not exactly
being so. I don't know how it is; I seem to want something or
other to stand by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my
darling cousin, I love you, so much!), but I don't settle down to
constancy in other things. It's such uphill work, and it takes
such a time!" said Richard with an air of vexation.

"That may be," I suggested, "because you don't like what you have
chosen."

"Poor fellow!" said Ada. "I am sure I don't wonder at it!"

No. It was not of the least use my trying to look wise. I tried
again, but how could I do it, or how could it have any effect if I
could, while Ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder and
while he looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at
him!

"You see, my precious girl," said Richard, passing her golden curls
through and through his hand, "I was a little hasty perhaps; or I
misunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. They don't seem to lie
in that direction. I couldn't tell till I tried. Now the question
is whether it's worth-while to undo all that has been done. It
seems like making a great disturbance about nothing particular."

"My dear Richard," said I, "how CAN you say about nothing
particular?"

"I don't mean absolutely that," he returned. "I mean that it MAY
be nothing particular because I may never want it."

Both Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly
worth-while to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone.
I then asked Richard whether he had thought of any more congenial
pursuit.

"There, my dear Mrs. Shipton," said Richard, "you touch me home.
Yes, I have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me."

"The law!" repeated Ada as if she were afraid of the name.

"If I went into Kenge's office," said Richard, "and if I were
placed under articles to Kenge, I should have my eye on the--hum!--
the forbidden ground--and should be able to study it, and master
it, and to satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being
properly conducted. I should be able to look after Ada's interests
and my own interests (the same thing!); and I should peg away at
Blackstone and all those fellows with the most tremendous ardour."

I was not by any means so sure of that, and I saw how his hankering
after the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes
cast a shade on Ada's face. But I thought it best to encourage him
in any project of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be
quite sure that his mind was made up now.

"My dear Minerva," said Richard, "I am as steady as you are. I
made a mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won't do so any
more, and I'll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is,
you know," said Richard, relapsing into doubt, "if it really is
worth-while, after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing
particular!"

This led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all
that we had said already and to our coming to much the same
conclusion afterwards. But we so strongly advised Richard to be
frank and open with Mr. Jarndyce, without a moment's delay, and his
disposition was naturally so opposed to concealment that he sought
him out at once (taking us with him) and made a full avowal.
"Rick," said my guardian, after hearing him attentively, "we can
retreat with honour, and we will. But we must he careful--for our
cousin s sake, Rick, for our cousin's sake--that we make no more
such mistakes. Therefore, in the matter of the law, we will have a
good trial before we decide. We will look before we leap, and take
plenty of time about it."

Richard's energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind that he
would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr. Kenge's
office in that hour and to have entered into articles with him on
the spot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution
that we had shown to be so necessary, he contented himself with
sitting down among us in his lightest spirits and talking as if his
one unvarying purpose in life from childhood had been that one
which now held possession of him. My guardian was very kind and
cordial with him, but rather grave, enough so to cause Ada, when he
had departed and we were going upstairs to bed, to say, "Cousin
John, I hope you don't think the worse of Richard?"

"No, my love," said he.

"Because it was very natural that Richard should be mistaken in
such a difficult case. It is not uncommon."

"No, no, my love," said he. "Don't look unhappy."

"Oh, I am not unhappy, cousin John!" said Ada, smiling cheerfully,
with her hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding
him good night. "But I should be a little so if you thought at all
the worse of Richard."

"My dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I should think the worse of him only
if you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should
be more disposed to quarrel with myself even then, than with poor
Rick, for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing!
He has time before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of
him? Not I, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!"

"No, indeed, cousin John," said Ada, "I am sure I could not--I am
sure I would not--think any ill of Richard if the whole world did.
I could, and I would, think better of him then than at any other
time!"

So quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his
shoulders--both hands now--and looking up into his face, like the
picture of truth!

"I think," said my guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, "I think
it must be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall
occasionally be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the
father. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little woman.
Pleasant slumbers! Happy dreams!"

This was the first time I ever saw him follow Ada with his eyes
with something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I well
remembered the look with which he had contemplated her and Richard
when she was singing in the firelight; it was but a very little
while since he had watched them passing down the room in which the
sun was shining, and away into the shade; but his glance was
changed, and even the silent look of confidence in me which now
followed it once more was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it
had originally been.

Ada praised Richard more to me that night than ever she had praised
him yet. She went to sleep with a little bracelet he had given her
clasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I
kissed her cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil
and happy she looked.

For I was so little inclined to sleep myself that night that I sat
up working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but
I was wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don't know why. At least
I don't think I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don't
think it matters.

At any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that
I would leave myself not a moment's leisure to be low-spirited.
For I naturally said, "Esther! You to be low-spirited. YOU!"  And
it really was time to say so, for I--yes, I really did see myself
in the glass, almost crying. "As if you had anything to make you
unhappy, instead of everything to make you happy, you ungrateful
heart!" said I.

If I could have made myself go to sleep, I would have done it
directly, but not being able to do that, I took out of my basket
some ornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was
busy with at that time and sat down to it with great determination.
It was necessary to count all the stitches in that work, and I
resolved to go on with it until I couldn't keep my eyes open, and
then to go to bed.

I soon found myself very busy. But I had left some silk downstairs
in a work-table drawer in the temporary growlery, and coming to a
stop for want of it, I took my candle and went softly down to get
it. To my great surprise, on going in I found my guardian still
there, and sitting looking at the ashes. He was lost in thought,
his book lay unheeded by his side, his silvered iron-grey hair was
scattered confusedly upon his forehead as though his hand had been
wandering among it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face
looked worn. Almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly,
I stood still for a moment and should have retired without speaking
had he not, in again passing his hand abstractedly through his
hair, seen me and started.

"Esther!"

I told him what I had come for.

"At work so late, my dear?"

"I am working late to-night," said I, "because I couldn't sleep and
wished to tire myself. But, dear guardian, you are late too, and
look weary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?"

"None, little woman, that YOU would readily understand," said he.

He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me that I inwardly repeated,
as if that would help me to his meaning, "That I could readily
understand!"

"Remain a moment, Esther," said he, "You were in my thoughts."

"I hope I was not the trouble, guardian?"

He slightly waved his hand and fell into his usual manner. The
change was so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so
much self-command, that I found myself again inwardly repeating,
"None that I could understand!"

"Little woman," said my guardian, "I was thinking--that is, I have
been thinking since I have been sitting here--that you ought to
know of your own history all I know. It is very little. Next to
nothing."

"Dear guardian," I replied, "when you spoke to me before on that
subject--"

"But since then," he gravely interposed, anticipating what I meant
to say, "I have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and
my having anything to tell you, are different considerations,
Esther. It is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I know."

"If you think so, guardian, it is right."

"I think so," he returned very gently, and kindly, and very
distinctly. "My dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage
can attach to your position in the mind of any man or woman worth a
thought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not
magnify it to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature."

I sat down and said after a little effort to be as calm as I ought
to be, "One of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is of these
words: 'Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.
The time will come, and soon enough, when you will understand this
better, and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.'"  I had
covered my face with my hands in repeating the words, but I took
them away now with a better kind of shame, I hope, and told him
that to him I owed the blessing that I had from my childhood to
that hour never, never, never felt it. He put up his hand as if to
stop me. I well knew that he was never to be thanked, and said no
more.

"Nine years, my dear," he said after thinking for a little while,
"have passed since I received a letter from a lady living in
seclusion, written with a stern passion and power that rendered it
unlike all other letters I have ever read. It was written to me
(as it told me in so many words), perhaps because it was the
writer's idiosyncrasy to put that trust in me, perhaps because it
was mine to justify it. It told me of a child, an orphan girl then
twelve years old, in some such cruel words as those which live in
your remembrance. It told me that the writer had bred her in
secrecy from her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence,
and that if the writer were to die before the child became a woman,
she would be left entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It
asked me to consider if I would, in that case, finish what the
writer had begun."

I listened in silence and looked attentively at him.

"Your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium
through which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and
the distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of
the need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she
was quite innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in
her darkened life, and replied to the letter."

I took his hand and kissed it.

"It laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see
the writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with
the world, but who would see a confidential agent if I would
appoint one. I accredited Mr. Kenge. The lady said, of her own
accord and not of his seeking, that her name was an assumed one.
That she was, if there were any ties of blood in such a case, the
child's aunt. That more than this she would never (and he was well
persuaded of the steadfastness of her resolution) for any human
consideration disclose. My dear, I have told you all."

I held his hand for a little while in mine.

"I saw my ward oftener than she saw me," he added, cheerily making
light of it, "and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy.
She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every
hour in every day!"

"And oftener still," said I, '"she blesses the guardian who is a
father to her!"

At the word father, I saw his former trouble come into his face.
He subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had
been there and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as
if they had given him a shock. I again inwardly repeated,
wondering, "That I could readily understand. None that I could
readily understand!"  No, it was true. I did not understand it.
Not for many and many a day.

"Take a fatherly good night, my dear," said he, kissing me on the
forehead, "and so to rest. These are late hours for working and
thinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, little
housekeeper!"

I neither worked nor thought any more that night. I opened my
grateful heart to heaven in thankfulness for its providence to me
and its care of me, and fell asleep.

We had a visitor next day. Mr. Allan Woodcourt came. He came to
take leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He was going
to China and to India as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be
away a long, long time.

I believe--at least I know--that he was not rich. All his widowed
mother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his
profession. It was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with
very little influence in London; and although he was, night and
day, at the service of numbers of poor people and did wonders of
gentleness and skill for them, he gained very little by it in
money. He was seven years older than I. Not that I need mention
it, for it hardly seems to belong to anything.

I think--I mean, he told us--that he had been in practice three or
four years and that if he could have hoped to contend through three
or four more, he would not have made the voyage on which he was
bound. But he had no fortune or private means, and so he was going
away. He had been to see us several times altogether. We thought
it a pity he should go away. Because he was distinguished in his
art among those who knew it best, and some of the greatest men
belonging to it had a high opinion of him.

When he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his mother with him for
the first time. She was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes,
but she seemed proud. She came from Wales and had had, a long time
ago, an eminent person for an ancestor, of the name of Morgan ap-
Kerrig--of some place that sounded like Gimlet--who was the most
illustrious person that ever was known and all of whose relations
were a sort of royal family. He appeared to have passed his life
in always getting up into mountains and fighting somebody; and a
bard whose name sounded like Crumlinwallinwer had sung his praises
in a piece which was called, as nearly as I could catch it,
Mewlinnwillinwodd.

Mrs. Woodcourt, after expatiating to us on the fame of her great
kinsman, said that no doubt wherever her son Allan went he would
remember his pedigree and would on no account form an alliance
below it. She told him that there were many handsome English
ladies in India who went out on speculation, and that there were
some to be picked up with property, but that neither charms nor
wealth would suffice for the descendant from such a line without
birth, which must ever be the first consideration. She talked so
much about birth that for a moment I half fancied, and with pain--  
But what an idle fancy to suppose that she could think or care what
MINE was!

Mr. Woodcourt seemed a little distressed by her prolixity, but he
was too considerate to let her see it and contrived delicately to
bring the conversation round to making his acknowledgments to my
guardian for his hospitality and for the very happy hours--he
called them the very happy hours--he had passed with us. The
recollection of them, he said, would go with him wherever he went
and would be always treasured. And so we gave him our hands, one
after another--at least, they did--and I did; and so he put his
lips to Ada's hand--and to mine; and so he went away upon his long,
long voyage!

I was very busy indeed all day and wrote directions home to the
servants, and wrote notes for my guardian, and dusted his books and
papers, and jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way and
another. I was still busy between the lights, singing and working
by the window, when who should come in but Caddy, whom I had no
expectation of seeing!

"Why, Caddy, my dear," said I, "what beautiful flowers!"

She had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand.

"Indeed, I think so, Esther," replied Caddy. "They are the
loveliest I ever saw."

"Prince, my dear?" said I in a whisper.

"No," answered Caddy, shaking her head and holding them to me to
smell. "Not Prince."

"Well, to be sure, Caddy!" said I. "You must have two lovers!"

"What? Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Caddy.

"Do they look like that sort of thing?" I repeated, pinching her
cheek.

Caddy only laughed in return, and telling me that she had come for
half an hour, at the expiration of which time Prince would be
waiting for her at the corner, sat chatting with me and Ada in the
window, every now and then handing me the flowers again or trying
how they looked against my hair. At last, when she was going, she
took me into my room and put them in my dress.

"For me?" said I, surprised.

"For you," said Caddy with a kiss. "They were left behind by
somebody."

"Left behind?"

"At poor Miss Flite's," said Caddy. "Somebody who has been very
good to her was hurrying away an hour ago to join a ship and left
these flowers behind. No, no! Don't take them out. Let the
pretty little things lie here," said Caddy, adjusting them with a
careful hand, "because I was present myself, and I shouldn't wonder
if somebody left them on purpose!"

"Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Ada, coming laughingly
behind me and clasping me merrily round the waist. "Oh, yes,
indeed they do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort
of thing. Oh, very like it indeed, my dear!"

CHAPTER XVIII

Lady Dedlock

It was not so easy as it had appeared at first to arrange for
Richard's making a trial of Mr. Kenge's office. Richard himself
was the chief impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to
leave Mr. Badger at any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted
to leave him at all. He didn't know, he said, really. It wasn't a
bad profession; he couldn't assert that he disliked it; perhaps he
liked it as well as he liked any other--suppose he gave it one more
chance! Upon that, he shut himself up for a few weeks with some
books and some bones and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of
information with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about
a month, began to cool, and when it was quite cooled, began to grow
warm again. His vacillations between law and medicine lasted so
long that midsummer arrived before he finally separated from Mr.
Badger and entered on an experimental course of Messrs. Kenge and
Carboy. For all his waywardness, he took great credit to himself
as being determined to be in earnest "this time."  And he was so
good-natured throughout, and in such high spirits, and so fond of
Ada, that it was very difficult indeed to be otherwise than pleased
with him.

"As to Mr. Jarndyce," who, I may mention, found the wind much
given, during this period, to stick in the east; "As to Mr.
Jarndyce," Richard would say to me, "he is the finest fellow in the
world, Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for
his satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular
wind-up of this business now."

The idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing
face and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could
catch and nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However,
he told us between-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent
that he wondered his hair didn't turn grey. His regular wind-up of
the business was (as I have said) that he went to Mr. Kenge's about
midsummer to try how he liked it.

All this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him
in a former illustration--generous, profuse, wildly careless, but
fully persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I
happened to say to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half
seriously, about the time of his going to Mr. Kenge's, that he
needed to have Fortunatus' purse, he made so light of money, which
he answered in this way, "My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this
old woman! Why does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd
(or whatever it was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few
days ago. Now, if I had stayed at Badger's I should have been
obliged to spend twelve pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking
lecture-fees. So I make four pounds--in a lump--by the
transaction!"

It was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what
arrangements should be made for his living in London while he
experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak
House, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener
than once a week. My guardian told me that if Richard were to
settle down at Mr. Kenge's he would take some apartments or
chambers where we too could occasionally stay for a few days at a
time; "but, little woman," he added, rubbing his head very
significantly, "he hasn't settled down there yet!"  The discussions
ended in our hiring for him, by the month, a neat little furnished
lodging in a quiet old house near Queen Square. He immediately
began to spend all the money he had in buying the oddest little
ornaments and luxuries for this lodging; and so often as Ada and I
dissuaded him from making any purchase that he had in contemplation
which was particularly unnecessary and expensive, he took credit
for what it would have cost and made out that to spend anything
less on something else was to save the difference.

While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn's
was postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his
lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have
gone with us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the
full novelty of his new position and was making most energetic
attempts to unravel the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently
we went without him, and my darling was delighted to praise him for
being so busy.

We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach and
had an entertaining companion in Mr. Skimpole. His furniture had
been all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took
possession of it on his blue-eyed daughter's birthday, but he
seemed quite relieved to think that it was gone. Chairs and table,
he said, were wearisome objects; they were monotonous ideas, they
had no variety of expression, they looked you out of countenance,
and you looked them out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be
bound to no particular chairs and tables, but to sport like a
butterfly among all the furniture on hire, and to flit from
rosewood to mahogany, and from mahogany to walnut, and from this
shape to that, as the humour took one!

"The oddity of the thing is," said Mr. Skimpole with a quickened
sense of the ludicrous, "that my chairs and tables were not paid
for, and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as
possible. Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in
it. The chair and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord
my rent. Why should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a
pimple on my nose which is disagreeable to my landlord's peculiar
ideas of beauty, my landlord has no business to scratch my chair
and table merchant's nose, which has no pimple on it. His
reasoning seems defective!"

"Well," said my guardian good-humouredly, "it's pretty clear that
whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to
pay for them."

"Exactly!" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That's the crowning point of
unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, 'My good man, you
are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay
for those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate
manner. Have you no consideration for HIS property?' He hadn't the
least."

"And refused all proposals," said my guardian.

"Refused all proposals," returned Mr. Skimpole. "I made him
business proposals. I had him into my room. I said, 'You are a
man of business, I believe?'  He replied, 'I am,'  'Very well,'
said I, 'now let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here
are pens and paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have
occupied your house for a considerable period, I believe to our
mutual satisfaction until this unpleasant misunderstanding arose;
let us be at once friendly and business-like. What do you want?'  
In reply to this, he made use of the figurative expression--which
has something Eastern about it--that he had never seen the colour
of my money. 'My amiable friend,' said I, 'I never have any money.
I never know anything about money.'  'Well, sir,' said he, 'what do
you offer if I give you time?'  'My good fellow,' said I, 'I have
no idea of time; but you say you are a man of business, and
whatever you can suggest to be done in a business-like way with
pen, and ink, and paper--and wafers--I am ready to do. Don't pay
yourself at another man's expense (which is foolish), but be
business-like!'  However, he wouldn't be, and there was an end of
it."

If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole's
childhood, it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the
journey he had a very good appetite for such refreshment as came in
our way (including a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never
thought of paying for anything. So when the coachman came round
for his fee, he pleasantly asked him what he considered a very good
fee indeed, now--a liberal one--and on his replying half a crown
for a single passenger, said it was little enough too, all things
considered, and left Mr. Jarndyce to give it him.

It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully,
the larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild
flowers, the trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields,
with a light wind blowing over them, filled the air with such a
delicious fragrance! Late in the afternoon we came to the market-
town where we were to alight from the coach--a dull little town
with a church-spire, and a marketplace, and a market-cross, and one
intensely sunny street, and a pond with an old horse cooling his
legs in it, and a very few men sleepily lying and standing about in
narrow little bits of shade. After the rustling of the leaves and
the waving of the corn all along the road, it looked as still, as
hot, as motionless a little town as England could produce.

At the inn we found Mr. Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open
carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He
was over-joyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity.

"By heaven!" said he after giving us a courteous greeting. This a
most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an
abominable public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the
earth. It is twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon.
The coachman ought to be put to death!"

"IS he after his time?" said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to
address himself. "You know my infirmity."

"Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!" replied Mr. Boythorn,
referring to his watch. "With two ladies in the coach, this
scoundrel has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty
minutes. Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be
accidental! But his father--and his uncle--were the most
profligate coachmen that ever sat upon a box."

While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed
us into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all
smiles and pleasure.

"I am sorry, ladies," he said, standing bare-headed at the
carriage-door when all was ready, "that I am obliged to conduct you
nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through
Sir Leicester Dedlock's park, and in that fellow's property I have
sworn never to set foot of mine, or horse's foot of mine, pending
the present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of
life!"  And here, catching my guardian's eye, he broke into one of
his tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless
little market-town.

"Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?" said my guardian as we
drove along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the
roadside.

"Sir Arrogant Numskull is here," replied Mr. Boythorn. "Ha ha ha!
Sir Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the
heels here. My Lady," in naming whom he always made a courtly
gesture as if particularly to exclude her from any part in the
quarrel, "is expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least
surprised that she postpones her appearance as long as possible.
Whatever can have induced that transcendent woman to marry that
effigy and figure-head of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable
mysteries that ever baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!"

"I suppose, said my guardian, laughing, "WE may set foot in the
park while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us,
does it?"

"I can lay no prohibition on my guests," he said, bending his head
to Ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully
upon him, "except in the matter of their departure. I am only
sorry that I cannot have the happiness of being their escort about
Chesney Wold, which is a very fine place! But by the light of this
summer day, Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay
with me, you are likely to have but a cool reception. He carries
himself like an eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of
eight-day clocks in gorgeous cases that never go and never went--Ha
ha ha!--but he will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you,
for the friends of his friend and neighbour Boythorn!"

"I shall not put him to the proof," said my guardian. "He is as
indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the
honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a
view of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough
for me."

"Well!" said Mr. Boythorn. "I am glad of it on the whole. It's in
better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax
defying the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little
church on a Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable
congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the
pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no
doubt he is surprised that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most
self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical and
utterly brainless ass!"

Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our
friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and diverted his
attention from its master.

It was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. Among
the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire
of the little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods
over which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly
wings were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air;
the smooth green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the
flowers were so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest
colours, how beautiful they looked! The house, with gable and
chimney, and tower, and turret, and dark doorway, and broad
terrace-walk, twining among the balustrades of which, and lying
heaped upon the vases, there was one great flush of roses, seemed
scarcely real in its light solidity and in the serene and peaceful
hush that rested on all around it. To Ada and to me, that above
all appeared the pervading influence. On everything, house,
garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks, fern, moss, woods
again, and far away across the openings in the prospect to the
distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom upon it, there
seemed to be such undisturbed repose.

When we came into the little village and passed a small inn with
the sign of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr.
Boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a
bench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside
him.

"That's the housekeeper's grandson, Mr. Rouncewell by name," said,
he, "and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady
Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep
her about her own fair person--an honour which my young friend
himself does not at all appreciate. However, he can't marry just
yet, even if his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the
best of it. In the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day
or two at a time to--fish. Ha ha ha ha!"

"Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?" asked Ada.

"Why, my dear Miss Clare," he returned, "I think they may perhaps
understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and
I must learn from you on such a point--not you from me."

Ada blushed, and Mr. Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey
horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm
and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.

He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a
lawn in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-
stocked orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a
venerable wall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But,
indeed, everything about the place wore an aspect of maturity and
abundance. The old lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the
very shadows of the cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with
fruit, the gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches
arched and rested on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries
grew in like profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on
the wall. Tumbled about among the spread nets and the glass frames
sparkling and winking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping
pods, and marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground
appeared a vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and
all kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring
meadows where the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great
nosegay. Such stillness and composure reigned within the orderly
precincts of the old red wall that even the feathers hung in
garlands to scare the birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a
ripening influence that where, here and there high up, a disused
nail and scrap of list still clung to it, it was easy to fancy that
they had mellowed with the changing seasons and that they had
rusted and decayed according to the common fate.

The house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the
garden, was a real old house with settles in the chimney of the
brick-floored kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one
side of it was the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr.
Boythorn maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose
duty was supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to
ring a large bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great
bull-dog established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal
destruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr.
Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards
to which his name was attached in large letters, the following
solemn warnings: "Beware of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious.
Lawrence Boythorn."  "The blunderbus is loaded with slugs.
Lawrence Boythorn."  "Man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all
times of the day and night. Lawrence Boythorn."  "Take notice.
That any person or persons audaciously presuming to trespass on
this property will be punished with the utmost severity of private
chastisement and prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.
Lawrence Boythorn."  These he showed us from the drawing-room
window, while his bird was hopping about his head, and he laughed,
"Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!" to that extent as he pointed them out
that I really thought he would have hurt himself.

"But this is taking a good deal of trouble," said Mr. Skimpole in
his light way, "when you are not in earnest after all."

"Not in earnest!" returned Mr. Boythorn with unspeakable warmth.
"Not in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have
bought a lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose
upon the first intolerable robber who should dare to make an
encroachment on my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to
come out and decide this question by single combat, and I will meet
him with any weapon known to mankind in any age or country. I am
that much in earnest. Not more!"

We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we
all set forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering
the park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a
pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful
trees until it brought us to the church-porch.

The congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with
the exception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of
whom were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping
in. There were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect
picture of an old coachman, who looked as if he were the official
representative of all the pomps and vanities that had ever been put
into his coach. There was a very pretty show of young women, and
above them, the handsome old face and fine responsible portly
figure of the housekeeper towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of
whom Mr. Boythorn had told us was close by her. She was so very
pretty that I might have known her by her beauty even if I had not
seen how blushingly conscious she was of the eyes of the young
fisherman, whom I discovered not far off. One face, and not an
agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed maliciously watchful
of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and everything there.
It was a Frenchwoman's.

As the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come,
I had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a
grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it
was. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued
light that made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old
brasses in the pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and
rendered the sunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous
ringer was working at the bell, inestimably bright. But a stir in
that direction, a gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces,
and a blandly ferocious assumption on the part of Mr. Boythorn of
being resolutely unconscious of somebody's existence forewarned me
that the great people were come and that the service was going to
begin.

"'Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy
sight--'"

Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by
the look I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in
which those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their
languor and to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine
down--released again, if I may say so--on my book; but I knew the
beautiful face quite well in that short space of time.

And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me,
associated with the lonely days at my godmother's; yes, away even
to the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little
glass after dressing my doll. And this, although I had never seen
this lady's face before in all my life--I was quite sure of it--
absolutely certain.

It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired
gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir
Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her
face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in
which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so
fluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having casually met her
eyes, I could not think.

I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome
it by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I
seemed to hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well-
remembered voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady
Dedlock's face accidentally resemble my godmother's? It might be
that it did, a little; but the expression was so different, and the
stern decision which had worn into my godmother's face, like
weather into rocks, was so completely wanting in the face before me
that it could not be that resemblance which had struck me. Neither
did I know the loftiness and haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face, at
all, in any one. And yet I--I, little Esther Summerson, the child
who lived a life apart and on whose birthday there was no
rejoicing--seemed to arise before my own eyes, evoked out of the
past by some power in this fashionable lady, whom I not only
entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I perfectly
well knew I had never seen until that hour.

It made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable
agitation that I was conscious of being distressed even by the
observation of the French maid, though I knew she had been looking
watchfully here, and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her
coming into the church. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last
overcame my strange emotion. After a long time, I looked towards
Lady Dedlock again. It was while they were preparing to sing,
before the sermon. She took no heed of me, and the beating at my
heart was gone. Neither did it revive for more than a few moments
when she once or twice afterwards glanced at Ada or at me through
her glass.

The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave his arm with much
taste and gallantry to Lady Dedlock--though he was obliged to walk
by the help of a thick stick--and escorted her out of church to the
pony carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed,
and so did the congregation, whom Sir Leicester had contemplated
all along (Mr. Skimpole said to Mr. Boythorn's infinite delight) as
if he were a considerable landed proprietor in heaven.

"He believes he is!" said Mr. Boythorn. "He firmly believes it.
So did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!"

"Do you know," pursued Mr. Skimpole very unexpectedly to Mr.
Boythorn, "it's agreeable to me to see a man of that sort."

"IS it!" said Mr. Boytborn.

"Say that he wants to patronize me," pursued Mr. Skimpole. "Very
well! I don't object."

"I do," said Mr. Boythorn with great vigour.

"Do you really?" returned Mr. Skimpole in his easy light vein.
"But that's taking trouble, surely. And why should you take
trouble? Here am I, content to receive things childishly as they
fall out, and I never take trouble! I come down here, for
instance, and I find a mighty potentate exacting homage. Very
well! I say 'Mighty potentate, here IS my homage! It's easier to
give it than to withhold it. Here it is. If you have anything of
an agreeable nature to show me, I shall be happy to see it; if you
have anything of an agreeable nature to give me, I shall be happy
to accept it.'  Mighty potentate replies in effect, 'This is a
sensible fellow. I find him accord with my digestion and my
bilious system. He doesn't impose upon me the necessity of rolling
myself up like a hedgehog with my points outward. I expand, I
open, I turn my silver lining outward like Milton's cloud, and it's
more agreeable to both of us.'  That's my view of such things,
speaking as a child!"

"But suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow," said Mr.
Boythorn, "where there was the opposite of that fellow--or of this
fellow. How then?"

"How then?" said Mr. Skimpole with an appearance of the utmost
simplicity and candour. "Just the same then! I should say, 'My
esteemed Boythorn'--to make you the personification of our
imaginary friend--'my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty
potentate? Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the
social system is to be agreeable; I take it that everybody's
business in the social system is to be agreeable. It's a system of
harmony, in short. Therefore if you object, I object. Now,
excellent Boythorn, let us go to dinner!'"

"But excellent Boythorn might say," returned our host, swelling and
growing very red, "I'll be--"

"I understand," said Mr. Skimpole. "Very likely he would."

"--if I WILL go to dinner!" cried Mr. Boythorn in a violent burst
and stopping to strike his stick upon the ground. "And he would
probably add, 'Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold
Skimpole?'"

"To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you know," he returned in
his gayest manner and with his most ingenuous smile, "'Upon my life
I have not the least idea! I don't know what it is you call by
that name, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess it
and find it comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you
heartily. But I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a
mere child, and I lay no claim to it, and I don't want it!'  So,
you see, excellent Boythorn and I would go to dinner after all!"

This was one of many little dialogues between them which I always
expected to end, and which I dare say would have ended under other
circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host.
But he had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible
position as our entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely
at and with Mr. Skimpole, as a child who blew bubbles and broke
them all day long, that matters never went beyond this point. Mr.
Skimpole, who always seemed quite unconscious of having been on
delicate ground, then betook himself to beginning some sketch in
the park which be never finished, or to playing fragments of airs
on the piano, or to singing scraps of songs, or to lying down on
his back under a tree and looking at the sky--which he couldn't
help thinking, he said, was what he was meant for; it suited him so
exactly.

"Enterprise and effort," he would say to us (on his back), are
delightful to me. I believe I am truly cosmopolitan. I have the
deepest sympathy with them. I lie in a shady place like this and
think of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or penetrating
to the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration. Mercenary
creatures ask, 'What is the use of a man's going to the North Pole?
What good does it do?'  I can't say; but, for anything I CAN say,
he may go for the purpose--though he don't know it--of employing my
thoughts as I lie here. Take an extreme case. Take the case of
the slaves on American plantations. I dare say they are worked
hard, I dare say they don't altogether like it. I dare say theirs
is an unpleasant experience on the whole; but they people the
landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is
one of the pleasanter objects of their existence. I am very
sensible of it, if it be, and I shouldn't wonder if it were!"

I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of
Mrs. Skimpole and the children, and in what point of view they
presented themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could
understand, they rarely presented themselves at all.

The week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of
my heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue
that to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down
among the transparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful
interlacings of the shadows of the trees, while the birds poured
out their songs and the air was drowsy with the hum of insects, had
been most delightful. We had one favourite spot, deep in moss and
last year's leaves, where there were some felled trees from which
the bark was all stripped off. Seated among these, we looked
through a green vista supported by thousands of natural columns,
the whitened stems of trees, upon a distant prospect made so
radiant by its contrast with the shade in which we sat and made so
precious by the arched perspective through which we saw it that it
was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon the Saturday we sat
here, Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard thunder muttering in
the distance and felt the large raindrops rattle through the
leaves.

The weather had been all the week extremely sultry, but the storm
broke so suddenly--upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot--that
before we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and
lightning were frequent and the rain came plunging through the
leaves as if every drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a
time for standing among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and
down the moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like
two broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a
keeper's lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the
dark beauty of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and
how the ivy clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow
near, where we had once seen the keeper's dog dive down into the
fern as if it were water.

The lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we
only clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter
there and put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were
all thrown open, and we sat just within the doorway watching the
storm. It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees,
and drove the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the
solemn thunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with
awe of the tremendous powers by which our little lives are
encompassed, to consider how beneficent they are and how upon the
smallest flower and leaf there was already a freshness poured from
all this seeming rage which seemed to make creation new again.

"Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?"

"Oh, no, Esther dear!" said Ada quietly.

Ada said it to me, but I had not spoken.

The beating of my heart came back again. I had never heard the
voice, as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same
strange way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind
innumerable pictures of myself.

Lady Dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge before our arrival
there and had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my
chair with her hand upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my
shoulder when I turned my head.

"I have frightened you?" she said.

No. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened!

"I believe," said Lady Dedlock to my guardian, "I have the pleasure
of speaking to Mr. Jarndyce."

"Your remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would,
Lady Dedlock," he returned.

"I recognized you in church on Sunday. I am sorry that any local
disputes of Sir Leicester's--they are not of his seeking, however,
I believe--should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to
show you any attention here."

"I am aware of the circumstances," returned my guardian with a
smile, "and am sufficiently obliged."

She had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed
habitual to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner,
though in a very pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was
beautiful, perfectly self-possessed, and had the air, I thought, of
being able to attract and interest any one if she had thought it
worth her while. The keeper had brought her a chair on which she
sat in the middle of the porch between us.

"Is the young gentleman disposed of whom you wrote to Sir Leicester
about and whose wishes Sir Leicester was sorry not to have it in
his power to advance in any way?" she said over her shoulder to my
guardian.

"I hope so," said he.

She seemed to respect him and even to wish to conciliate him.
There was something very winning in her haughty manner, and it
became more familiar--I was going to say more easy, but that could
hardly be--as she spoke to him over her shoulder.

"I presume this is your other ward, Miss Clare?"

He presented Ada, in form.

"You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote
character," said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce over her shoulder
again, "if you only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. But
present me," and she turned full upon me, "to this young lady too!"

"Miss Summerson really is my ward," said Mr. Jarndyce. "I am
responsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case."

"Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?" said my Lady.

"Yes."

"She is very fortunate in her guardian."

Lady Dedlock looked at me, and I looked at her and said I was
indeed. All at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost
expressive of displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her
shoulder again.

"Ages have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, Mr.
Jarndyce."

"A long time. At least I thought it was a long time, until I saw
you last Sunday," he returned.

"What! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become
one to me!" she said with some disdain. "I have achieved that
reputation, I suppose."

"You have achieved so much, Lady Dedlock," said my guardian, "that
you pay some little penalty, I dare say. But none to me."

"So much!" she repeated, slightly laughing. "Yes!"

With her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and I know
not what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than
children. So, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking
at the rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy
herself with her own thoughts as if she had been alone.

"I think you knew my sister when we were abroad together better
than you know me?" she said, looking at him again.

"Yes, we happened to meet oftener," he returned.

"We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in
common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I
suppose, but it could not be helped."

Lady Dedlock again sat looking at the rain. The storm soon began
to pass upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the lightning
ceased, the thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun
began to glisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. As we sat
there, silently, we saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at
a merry pace.

"The messenger is coming back, my Lady," said the keeper, "with the
carriage."

As it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. There
alighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the
Frenchwoman whom I had seen in church, and secondly the pretty
girl, the Frenchwoman with a defiant confidence, the pretty girl
confused and hesitating.

"What now?" said Lady Dedlock. "Two!"

"I am your maid, my Lady, at the present," said the Frenchwoman.
"The message was for the attendant."

"I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady," said the pretty girl.

"I did mean you, child," replied her mistress calmly. "Put that
shawl on me."

She slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty
girl lightly dropped it in its place. The Frenchwoman stood
unnoticed, looking on with her lips very tightly set.

"I am sorry," said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce, "that we are not
likely to renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send
the carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly."

But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a
graceful leave of Ada--none of me--and put her hand upon his
proffered arm, and got into the carriage, which was a little, low,
park carriage with a hood.

"Come in, child," she said to the pretty girl; "I shall want you.
Go on!"

The carriage rolled away, and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers
she had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she
had alighted.

I suppose there is nothing pride can so little bear with as pride
itself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner. Her
retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She
remained perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the
drive, and then, without the least discomposure of countenance,
slipped off her shoes, left them on the ground, and walked
deliberately in the same direction through the wettest of the wet
grass.

"Is that young woman mad?" said my guardian.

"Oh, no, sir!" said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking
after her. "Hortense is not one of that sort. She has as good a
head-piece as the best. But she's mortal high and passionate--
powerful high and passionate; and what with having notice to leave,
and having others put above her, she don't take kindly to it."

"But why should she walk shoeless through all that water?" said my
guardian.

"Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!" said the man.

"Or unless she fancies it's blood," said the woman. "She'd as soon
walk through that as anything else, I think, when her own's up!"

We passed not far from the house a few minutes afterwards.
Peaceful as it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more
so now, with a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind
blowing, the birds no longer hushed but singing strongly,
everything refreshed by the late rain, and the little carriage
shining at the doorway like a fairy carriage made of silver.
Still, very steadfastly and quietly walking towards it, a peaceful
figure too in the landscape, went Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless,
through the wet grass.

CHAPTER XIX

Moving On

It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good
ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-
fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing clippers
are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of
ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse
their papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where.
The courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep.
Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales
might sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found
there, walk.

The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn, and Lincoln's Inn even
unto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where
stranded proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on
lop-sided stools that will not recover their perpendicular until
the current of Term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the
long vacation. Outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score,
messages and parcels are to be left at the Porter's Lodge by the
bushel. A crop of grass would grow in the chinks of the stone
pavement outside Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters,
who have nothing to do beyond sitting in the shade there, with
their white aprons over their heads to keep the flies off, grub it
up and eat it thoughtfully.

There is only one judge in town. Even he only comes twice a week
to sit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on
his circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red
petticoats, no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a
close-shaved gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-
bronze on the judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by
the solar rays from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-
fish shop as he comes along and drinks iced ginger-beer!

The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How
England can get on through four long summer months without its bar
--which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only
legitimate triumph in prosperity--is beside the question; assuredly
that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The
learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the
unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by
the opposite party that he never seems likely to recover it is
doing infinitely better than might be expected in Switzerland. The
learned gentleman who does the withering business and who blights
all opponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a
French watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint
on the smallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks.
The very learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his
gingery complexion in pools and fountains of law until he has
become great in knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the
drowsy bench with legal "chaff," inexplicable to the uninitiated
and to most of the initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic
delight in aridity and dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed
fragments of the same great palladium are to be found on the canals
of Venice, at the second cataract of the Nile, in the baths of
Germany, and sprinkled on the sea-sand all over the English coast.
Scarcely one is to be encountered in the deserted region of
Chancery Lane. If such a lonely member of the bar do flit across
the waste and come upon a prowling suitor who is unable to leave
off haunting the scenes of his anxiety, they frighten one another
and retreat into opposite shades.

It is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the
young clerks are madly in love, and according to their various
degrees, pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate,
Ramsgate, or Gravesend. All the middle-aged clerks think their
families too large. All the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns
of Court and pant about staircases and other dry places seeking
water give short howls of aggravation. All the blind men's dogs in
the streets draw their masters against pumps or trip them over
buckets. A shop with a sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a
bowl of gold and silver fish in the window, is a sanctuary. Temple
Bar gets so hot that it is, to the adjacent Strand and Fleet
Street, what a heater is in an urn, and keeps them simmering all
night.

There are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be
cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in
dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those
retirements seem to blaze. In Mr. Krook's court, it is so hot that
the people turn their houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the
pavement--Mr. Krook included, who there pursues his studies, with
his cat (who never is too hot) by his side. The Sol's Arms has
discontinued the Harmonic Meetings for the season, and Little
Swills is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he
comes out in quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a
juvenile complexion calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the
feelings of the most fastidious mind.

Over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil
of rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the
long vacation. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook's Court,
Cursitor Street, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind
as a sympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as
a law-stationer aforesaid. He has more leisure for musing in
Staple Inn and in the Rolls Yard during the long vacation than at
other seasons, and he says to the two 'prentices, what a thing it
is in such hot weather to think that you live in an island with the
sea a-rolling and a-bowling right round you.

Guster is busy in the little drawing-room on this present afternoon
in the long vacation, when Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby have it in
contemplation to receive company. The expected guests are rather
select than numerous, being Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and no more.
From Mr. Chadband's being much given to describe himself, both
verbally and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken
by strangers for a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is,
as he expresses it, "in the ministry."  Mr. Chadband is attached to
no particular denomination and is considered by his persecutors to
have nothing so very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects
as to render his volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent
on his conscience; but he has his followers, and Mrs. Snagsby is of
the number. Mrs. Snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward
by the vessel, Chadband; and her attention was attracted to that
Bark A 1 when she was something flushed by the hot weather.

"My little woman," says Mr. Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn,
"likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!"

So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the
handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of
holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little
drawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the
portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth,
the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision
made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin
slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows
of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to
be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For
Chadband is rather a consuming vessel--the persecutors say a
gorging vessel--and can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife
and fork remarkably well.

Mr. Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when
they are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his
hand, says to Mrs. Snagsby, "At what time did you expect Mr. and
Mrs. Chadband, my love?"

"At six," says Mrs. Snagsby.

Mr. Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way that "it's gone
that."

"Perhaps you'd like to begin without them," is Mrs. Snagsby's
reproachful remark.

Mr. Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he
says, with his cough of mildness, "No, my dear, no. I merely named
the time."

"What's time," says Mrs. Snagsby, "to eternity?"

"Very true, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby. "Only when a person lays
in victuals for tea, a person does it with a view--perhaps--more to
time. And when a time is named for having tea, it's better to come
up to it."

"To come up to it!" Mrs. Snagsby repeats with severity. "Up to it!
As if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!"

"Not at all, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby.

Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes
rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular
ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that
Mr. and Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the
inner door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is
admonished by Mrs. Snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her
patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. Much
discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order)
by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as
to announce "Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay,
whatsername!" and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.

Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general
appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs.
Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband
moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught
to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if
they were inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much
in a perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first
putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers
that he is going to edify them.

"My friends," says Mr. Chadband, "peace be on this house! On the
master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and
on the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is
peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and
gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh,
yes! Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon
yours."

In consequence of Mrs. Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr. Snagsby
thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well
received.

"Now, my friends," proceeds Mr. Chadband, "since I am upon this
theme--"

Guster presents herself. Mrs. Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice
and without removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful
distinctness, "Go away!"

"Now, my friends," says Chadband, "since I am upon this theme, and
in my lowly path improving it--"

Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur "one thousing seven hundred
and eighty-two."  The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, "Go
away!"

"Now, my friends," says Mr. Chadband, "we will inquire in a spirit
of love--"

Still Guster reiterates "one thousing seven hundred and eighty-
two."

Mr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to
be persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile,
says, "Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!"

"One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir.
Which he wish to know what the shilling ware for," says Guster,
breathless.

"For?" returns Mrs. Chadband. "For his fare!"

Guster replied that "he insistes on one and eightpence or on
summonsizzing the party."  Mrs. Snagsby and Mrs. Chadband are
proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr. Chadband quiets
the tumult by lifting up his hand.

"My friends," says he, "I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday.
It is right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought
not to murmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!"

While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby,
as who should say, "You hear this apostle!" and while Mr. Chadband
glows with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money.
It is Mr. Chadband's habit--it is the head and front of his
pretensions indeed--to keep this sort of debtor and creditor
account in the smallest items and to post it publicly on the most
trivial occasions.

"My friends," says Chadband, "eightpence is not much; it might
justly have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half
a crown. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!"

With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in
verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair,
lifts up his admonitory hand.

"My friends," says he, "what is this which we now behold as being
spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my
friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends?
Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we
are but of the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly,
my friends? We cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?"

Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures
to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, "No wings."  But
is immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.

"I say, my friends," pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and
obliterating Mr. Snagsby's suggestion, "why can we not fly? Is it
because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my
friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do
without strength, my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us,
our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we
should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a
human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to
our limbs? Is it," says Chadband, glancing over the table, "from
bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk
which is yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid
by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such
like? It is. Then let us partake of the good things which are set
before us!"

The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr.
Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another,
after this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of
their determination to persecute, since it must be within
everybody's experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely
received and much admired.

Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down
at Mr. Snagsby's table and lays about him prodigiously. The
conversion of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already
mentioned appears to be a process so inseparable from the
constitution of this exemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and
drink, he may be described as always becoming a kind of
considerable oil mills or other large factory for the production of
that article on a wholesale scale. On the present evening of the
long vacation, in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, he does such a
powerful stroke of business that the warehouse appears to be quite
full when the works cease.

At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never
recovered her first failure, but has neglected no possible or
impossible means of bringing the establishment and herself into
contempt--among which may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly
performing clashing military music on Mr. Chadband's head with
plates, and afterwards crowning that gentleman with muffins--at
which period of the entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that
he is wanted.

"And being wanted in the--not to put too fine a point upon it--in
the shop," says Mr. Snagsby, rising, "perhaps this good company
will excuse me for half a minute."

Mr. Snagsby descends and finds the two 'prentices intently
contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the
arm.

"Why, bless my heart," says Mr. Snagsby, "what's the matter!"

"This boy," says the constable, "although he's repeatedly told to,
won't move on--"

"I'm always a-moving on, sar, cries the boy, wiping away his grimy
tears with his arm. "I've always been a-moving and a-moving on,
ever since I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor
I do move!"

"He won't move on," says the constable calmly, with a slight
professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in
his stiff stock, "although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and
therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He's as obstinate
a young gonoph as I know. He WON'T move on."

"Oh, my eye! Where can I move to!" cries the boy, clutching quite
desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of
Mr. Snagsby's passage.

"Don't you come none of that or I shall make blessed short work of
you!" says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. "My
instructions are that you are to move on. I have told you so five
hundred times."

"But where?" cries the boy.

"Well! Really, constable, you know," says Mr. Snagsby wistfully,
and coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and
doubt, "really, that does seem a question. Where, you know?"

"My instructions don't go to that," replies the constable. "My
instructions are that this boy is to move on."

Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else that the
great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few
years in this business to set you the example of moving on. The
one grand recipe remains for you--the profound philosophical
prescription--the be-all and the end-all of your strange existence
upon earth. Move on! You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the
great lights can't at all agree about that. Move on!

Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all
indeed, but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no
thoroughfare in any direction. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband
and Mrs. Snagsby, hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the
stairs. Guster having never left the end of the passage, the whole
household are assembled.

"The simple question is, sir," says the constable, "whether you
know this boy. He says you do."

Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, "No he
don't!"

"My lit-tle woman!" says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase.
"My love, permit me! Pray have a moment's patience, my dear. I do
know something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can't say
that there's any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable."  To
whom the law-stationer relates his Joful and woful experience,
suppressing the half-crown fact.

"Well!" says the constable, "so far, it seems, he had grounds for
what he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said
you knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he
was acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper,
and if I'd call and make the inquiry, he'd appear. The young man
don't seem inclined to keep his word, but--  Oh! Here IS the young
man!"

Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby and touches his hat with
the chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.

"I was strolling away from the office just now when I found this
row going on," says Mr. Guppy to the law-stationer, "and as your
name was mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be
looked into."

"It was very good-natured of you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I am
obliged to you."  And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience,
again suppressing the half-crown fact.

"Now, I know where you live," says the constable, then, to Jo.
"You live down in Tom-all-Alone's. That's a nice innocent place to
live in, ain't it?"

"I can't go and live in no nicer place, sir," replies Jo. "They
wouldn't have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice
innocent place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent
lodging to such a reg'lar one as me!"

"You are very poor, ain't you?" says the constable.

"Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin'ral," replies Jo. "I
leave you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him,"
says the constable, producing them to the company, "in only putting
my hand upon him!"

"They're wot's left, Mr. Snagsby," says Jo, "out of a sov-ring as
wos give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as
come to my crossin one night and asked to be showd this 'ere ouse
and the ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the
berrin-ground wot he's berrid in. She ses to me she ses 'are you
the boy at the inkwhich?' she ses. I ses 'yes' I ses. She ses to
me she ses 'can you show me all them places?'  I ses 'yes I can' I
ses. And she ses to me 'do it' and I dun it and she giv me a
sov'ring and hooked it. And I an't had much of the sov'ring
neither," says Jo, with dirty tears, "fur I had to pay five bob,
down in Tom-all-Alone's, afore they'd square it fur to give me
change, and then a young man he thieved another five while I was
asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence and the landlord he
stood drains round with a lot more on it."

"You don't expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the
sovereign, do you?" says the constable, eyeing him aside with
ineffable disdain.

"I don't know as I do, sir," replies Jo. "I don't expect nothink
at all, sir, much, but that's the true hist'ry on it."

"You see what he is!" the constable observes to the audience.
"Well, Mr. Snagsby, if I don't lock him up this time, will you
engage for his moving on?"

"No!" cries Mrs. Snagsby from the stairs.

"My little woman!" pleads her husband. "Constable, I have no doubt
he'll move on. You know you really must do it," says Mr. Snagsby.

"I'm everyways agreeable, sir," says the hapless Jo.

"Do it, then," observes the constable. "You know what you have got
to do. Do it! And recollect you won't get off so easy next time.
Catch hold of your money. Now, the sooner you're five mile off,
the better for all parties."

With this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun
as a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors
good afternoon and makes the echoes of Cook's Court perform slow
music for him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his
iron-bound hat in his hand for a little ventilation.

Now, Jo's improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign
has awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr.
Guppy, who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has
been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation,
takes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular cross-
examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by the
ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step upstairs and
drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of the
tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Guppy
yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow
into the drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as
a witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other
shape like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying
him according to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike
many such model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing
and of its being lengthy, for Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent,
and Mrs. Snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive
disposition, but that it lifts her husband's establishment higher
up in the law. During the progress of this keen encounter, the
vessel Chadband, being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets
aground and waits to be floated off.

"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "Either this boy sticks to it like
cobbler's-wax or there is something out of the common here that
beats anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's."

Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, "You don't say
so!"

"For years!" replied Mrs. Chadband.

"Has known Kenge and Carboy's office for years," Mrs. Snagsby
triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy. "Mrs. Chadband--this
gentleman's wife--Reverend Mr. Chadband."

"Oh, indeed!" says Mr. Guppy.

"Before I married my present husband," says Mrs. Chadband.

"Was you a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, transferring
his cross-examination.

"No."

"NOT a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy.

Mrs. Chadband shakes her head.

"Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in
something, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to
model his conversation on forensic principles.

"Not exactly that, either," replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the
joke with a hard-favoured smile.

"Not exactly that, either!" repeats Mr. Guppy. "Very good. Pray,
ma'am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions
(we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and
Carboy's office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take
time, ma'am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma'am?"

"Neither," says Mrs. Chadband as before.

"Oh! A child!" says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs.
Snagsby the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on
British jurymen. "Now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to
tell us WHAT child."

"You have got it at last, sir," says Mrs. Chadband with another
hard-favoured smile. "Well, sir, it was before your time, most
likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a
child named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs.
Kenge and Carboy."

"Miss Summerson, ma'am!" cries Mr. Guppy, excited.

"I call her Esther Summerson," says Mrs. Chadband with austerity.
"There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther.
'Esther, do this! Esther, do that!' and she was made to do it."

"My dear ma'am," returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small
apartment, "the humble individual who now addresses you received
that young lady in London when she first came here from the
establishment to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the
pleasure of taking you by the hand."

Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed
signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his
pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Snagsby whispers "Hush!"

"My friends," says Chadband, "we have partaken in moderation"
(which was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) "of
the comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live
upon the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful
therein; may it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it
advance, may it proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends,
have we partaken of any-hing else? We have. My friends, of what
else have we partaken? Of spiritual profit? Yes. From whence
have we derived that spiritual profit? My young friend, stand
forth!"

Jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch
forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the
eloquent Chadband with evident doubts of his intentions.

"My young friend," says Chadband, "you are to us a pearl, you are
to us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And
why, my young friend?"

"I don't know," replies Jo. "I don't know nothink."

"My young friend," says Chadband, "it is because you know nothing
that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young
friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air?
No. A fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my
young friend. A human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why
glorious, my young friend? Because you are capable of receiving
the lessons of wisdom, because you are capable of profiting by this
discourse which I now deliver for your good, because you are not a
stick, or a staff, or a stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.

     O running stream of sparkling joy
     To be a soaring human boy!

And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No.
Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are
in a state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity,
because you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a
state of bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a
spirit of love, inquire."

At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have
been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his
face and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses
her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend.

"My friends," says Mr. Chadband with his persecuted chin folding
itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, "it is right
that I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is
right that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be
corrected. I stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride
of my three hours' improving. The account is now favourably
balanced: my creditor has accepted a composition. O let us be
joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!"

Great sensation on the part of Mrs. Snagsby.

"My friends," says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, "I
will not proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-
morrow, my young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am
to be found to deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like
the thirsty swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that,
and upon the day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear
discourses?"  (This with a cow-like lightness.)

Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms,
gives a shuffling nod. Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mrs.
Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But
before he goes downstairs, Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken
meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms.

So, Mr. Chadband--of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder
he should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable
nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave
off, having once the audacity to begin--retires into private life
until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo
moves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge,
where he finds a baking stony corner wherein to settle to his
repast.

And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the
great cross on the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral, glittering above
a red-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy's face one
might suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning
confusion of the great, confused city--so golden, so high up, so
far out of his reach. There he sits, the sun going down, the river
running fast, the crowd flowing by him in two streams--everything
moving on to some purpose and to one end--until he is stirred up
and told to "move on" too.

CHAPTER XX

A New Lodger

The long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river
very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr. Guppy
saunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of
his penknife and broken the point off by sticking that instrument
into his desk in every direction. Not that he bears the desk any
ill will, but he must do something, and it must be something of an
unexciting nature, which will lay neither his physical nor his
intellectual energies under too heavy contribution. He finds that
nothing agrees with him so well as to make little gyrations on one
leg of his stool, and stab his desk, and gape.

Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken
out a shooting license and gone down to his father's, and Mr.
Guppy's two fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr. Guppy and
Mr. Richard Carstone divide the dignity of the office. But Mr.
Carstone is for the time being established in Kenge's room, whereat
Mr. Guppy chafes. So exceedingly that he with biting sarcasm
informs his mother, in the confidential moments when he sups with
her off a lobster and lettuce in the Old Street Road, that he is
afraid the office is hardly good enough for swells, and that if he
had known there was a swell coming, he would have got it painted.

Mr. Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a
stool in Kenge and Carboy's office of entertaining, as a matter of
course, sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such
person wants to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or
wherefore, he shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the
strength of these profound views, he in the most ingenious manner
takes infinite pains to counterplot when there is no plot, and
plays the deepest games of chess without any adversary.

It is a source of much gratification to Mr. Guppy, therefore, to
find the new-comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce
and Jarndyce, for he well knows that nothing but confusion and
failure can come of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to
a third saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy's
office, to wit, Young Smallweed.

Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick
Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling) was ever a boy
is much doubted in Lincoln's Inn. He is now something under
fifteen and an old limb of the law. He is facetiously understood
to entertain a passion for a lady at a cigar-shop in the
neighbourhood of Chancery Lane and for her sake to have broken off
a contract with another lady, to whom he had been engaged some
years. He is a town-made article, of small stature and weazen
features, but may be perceived from a considerable distance by
means of his very tall hat. To become a Guppy is the object of his
ambition. He dresses at that gentleman (by whom he is patronized),
talks at him, walks at him, founds himself entirely on him. He is
honoured with Mr. Guppy's particular confidence and occasionally
advises him, from the deep wells of his experience, on difficult
points in private life.

Mr. Guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning after
trying all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy,
and after several times putting his head into the iron safe with a
notion of cooling it. Mr. Smallweed has been twice dispatched for
effervescent drinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official
tumblers and stirred them up with the ruler. Mr. Guppy propounds
for Mr. Smallweed's consideration the paradox that the more you
drink the thirstier you are and reclines his head upon the window-
sill in a state of hopeless languor.

While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln's Inn,
surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Guppy becomes
conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk
below and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the
same time, a low whistle is wafted through the Inn and a suppressed
voice cries, "Hip! Gup-py!"

"Why, you don't mean it!" says Mr. Guppy, aroused. "Small! Here's
Jobling!"  Small's head looks out of window too and nods to
Jobling.

"Where have you sprung up from?" inquires Mr. Guppy.

"From the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can't stand it any
longer. I must enlist. I say! I wish you'd lend me half a crown.
Upon my soul, I'm hungry."

Jobling looks hungry and also has the appearance of having run to
seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford.

"I say! Just throw out half a crown if you have got one to spare.
I want to get some dinner."

"Will you come and dine with me?" says Mr. Guppy, throwing out the
coin, which Mr. Jobling catches neatly.

"How long should I have to hold out?" says Jobling.

"Not half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes,
returns Mr. Guppy, butting inward with his head.

"What enemy?"

"A new one. Going to be articled. Will you wait?"

"Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?" says Mr
Jobling.

Smallweed suggests the law list. But Mr. Jobling declares with
much earnestness that he "can't stand it."

"You shall have the paper," says Mr. Guppy. "He shall bring it
down. But you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our
staircase and read. It's a quiet place."

Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious
Smallweed supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops
his eye upon him from the landing as a precaution against his
becoming disgusted with waiting and making an untimely departure.
At last the enemy retreats, and then Smallweed fetches Mr. Jobling
up.

"Well, and how are you?" says Mr. Guppy, shaking hands with him.

"So, so. How are you?"

Mr. Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling
ventures on the question, "How is SHE?"  This Mr. Guppy resents as
a liberty, retorting, "Jobling, there ARE chords in the human
mind--"  Jobling begs pardon.

"Any subject but that!" says Mr. Guppy with a gloomy enjoyment of
his injury. "For there ARE chords, Jobling--"

Mr. Jobling begs pardon again.

During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the
dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper,
"Return immediately."  This notification to all whom it may
concern, he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall
hat at the angle of inclination at which Mr. Guppy wears his,
informs his patron that they may now make themselves scarce.

Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house,
of the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-
bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is
supposed to have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed,
of whom it may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom
years are nothing. He stands precociously possessed of centuries
of owlish wisdom. If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he
must have lain there in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, has
Smallweed; and he drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his
neck is stiff in his collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he
knows all about it, whatever it is. In short, in his bringing up
he has been so nursed by Law and Equity that he has become a kind
of fossil imp, to account for whose terrestrial existence it is
reported at the public offices that his father was John Doe and his
mother the only female member of the Roe family, also that his
first long-clothes were made from a blue bag.

Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the
window of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant
baskets of peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for
the spit, Mr. Smallweed leads the way. They know him there and
defer to him. He has his favourite box, he bespeaks all the
papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs, who keep them more than
ten minutes afterwards. It is of no use trying him with anything
less than a full-sized "bread" or proposing to him any joint in cut
unless it is in the very best cut. In the matter of gravy he is
adamant.

Conscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread
experience, Mr. Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's
banquet, turning an appealing look towards him as the waitress
repeats the catalogue of viands and saying "What do YOU take,
Chick?"  Chick, out of the profundity of his artfulness, preferring
"veal and ham and French beans--and don't you forget the stuffing,
Polly" (with an unearthly cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and
Mr. Jobling give the like order. Three pint pots of half-and-half
are superadded. Quickly the waitress returns bearing what is
apparently a model of the Tower of Babel but what is really a pile
of plates and flat tin dish-covers. Mr. Smallweed, approving of
what is set before him, conveys intelligent benignity into his
ancient eye and winks upon her. Then, amid a constant coming in,
and going out, and running about, and a clatter of crockery, and a
rumbling up and down of the machine which brings the nice cuts from
the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more nice cuts down the
speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost of nice cuts that
have been disposed of, and a general flush and steam of hot joints,
cut and uncut, and a considerably heated atmosphere in which the
soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break out spontaneously into
eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the legal triumvirate
appease their appetites.

Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might
require. His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a
glistening nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade.
The same phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and
particularly at the seams. He has the faded appearance of a
gentleman in embarrassed circumstances; even his light whiskers
droop with something of a shabby air.

His appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some
little time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal
and ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway
in theirs, that Mr. Guppy proposes another. "Thank you, Guppy,"
says Mr. Jobling, "I really don't know but what I WILL take
another."

Another being brought, he falls to with great goodwill.

Mr. Guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half
way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at
his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his
legs and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of
contentment, Mr. Guppy says, "You are a man again, Tony!"

"Well, not quite yet," says Mr. Jobling. "Say, just born."

"Will you take any other vegetables? Grass? Peas? Summer
cabbage?"

"Thank you, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling. "I really don't know but
what I WILL take summer cabbage."

Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr. Smallweed) of
"Without slugs, Polly!"  And cabbage produced.

"I am growing up, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, plying his knife and
fork with a relishing steadiness.

"Glad to hear it."

"In fact, I have just turned into my teens," says Mr. Jobling.

He says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves
as Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs, thus getting over the
ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by
a veal and ham and a cabbage.

"Now, Small," says Mr. Guppy, "what would you recommend about
pastry?"

"Marrow puddings," says Mr. Smallweed instantly.

"Aye, aye!" cries Mr. Jobling with an arch look. "You're there,
are you? Thank you, Mr. Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take a
marrow pudding."

Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr. Jobling adds in a
pleasant humour that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed,
by command of Mr. Smallweed, "three Cheshires," and to those "three
small rums."  This apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr.
Jobling puts up his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side
of the box to himself), leans against the wall, and says, "I am
grown up now, Guppy. I have arrived at maturity."

"What do you think, now," says Mr. Guppy, "about--you don't mind
Smallweed?"

"Not the least in the worid. I have the pleasure of drinking his
good health."

"Sir, to you!" says Mr. Smallweed.

"I was saying, what do you think NOW," pursues Mr. Guppy, "of
enlisting?"

"Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr. Jobling, "is one
thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another
thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What
am I to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know," says Mr.
Jobling, pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture
in an English stable. "Ill fo manger. That's the French saying,
and mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or
more so."

Mr. Smallweed is decidedly of opinion "much more so."

"If any man had told me," pursues Jobling, "even so lately as when
you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over
to see that house at Castle Wold--"

Mr. Smallweed corrects him--Chesney Wold.

"Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If
any man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present
time as I literally find myself, I should have--well, I should have
pitched into him," says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water
with an air of desperate resignation; "I should have let fly at his
head."

"Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,"
remonstrates Mr. Guppy. "You were talking about nothing else in
the gig."

"Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, "I will not deny it. I was on the wrong
side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round."

That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their
being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round!
As though a lunatic should trust in the world's "coming"
triangular!

"I had confident expectations that things would come round and be
all square," says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and
perhaps of meaning too. "But I was disappointed. They never did.
And when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to
people that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty
trifles of borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion.
And of any new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a
reference to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up.
Then what's a fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and
living cheap down about the market-gardens, but what's the use of
living cheap when you have got no money? You might as well live
dear."

"Better," Mr. Smallweed thinks.

"Certainly. It's the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers
have been my weaknesses, and I don't care who knows it," says Mr.
Jobling. "They are great weaknesses--Damme, sir, they are great.
Well," proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-
water, "what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?"

Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in
his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive
manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise
than as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.

"Jobling," says Mr. Guppy, "myself and our mutual friend Smallweed--"

Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, "Gentlemen both!" and drinks.

"--Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once
since you--"

"Say, got the sack!" cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. "Say it, Guppy.
You mean it."

"No-o-o! Left the Inn," Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests.

"Since you left the Inn, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy; "and I have
mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately
thought of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?"

"I know there is such a stationer," returns Mr. Jobling. "He was
not ours, and I am not acquainted with him."

"He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him," Mr. Guppy
retorts. "Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with
him through some accidental circumstances that have made me a
visitor of his in private life. Those circumstances it is not
necessary to offer in argument. They may--or they may not--have
some reference to a subject which may--or may not--have cast its
shadow on my existence."

As it is Mr. Guppy's perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt
his particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch
it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords
in the human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the
pitfall by remaining silent.

"Such things may be," repeats Mr. Guppy, "or they may not be. They
are no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and
Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in
busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all
Tulkinghorn's, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our
mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove
this?"

Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn.

"Now, gentlemen of the jury," says Mr. Guppy, "--I mean, now,
Jobling--you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted.
But it's better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want
time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You
might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for
Snagsby."

Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed
checks him with a dry cough and the words, "Hem! Shakspeare!"

"There are two branches to this subject, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy.
"That is the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the
Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy in his
encouraging cross-examination-tone, "I think you know Krook, the
Chancellor, across the lane?"

"I know him by sight," says Mr. Jobling.

"You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?"

"Everybody knows her," says Mr. Jobling.

"Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties
of late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it
the amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of
instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her
presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and
into a knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room
to let. You may live there at a very low charge under any name you
like, as quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He'll ask no
questions and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me--
before the clock strikes, if you chose. And I tell you another
thing, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice
and become familiar again, "he's an extraordinary old chap--always
rummaging among a litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching
himself to read and write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to
me. He is a most extraordinary old chap, sir. I don't know but
what it might be worth a fellow's while to look him up a bit."

"You don't mean--" Mr. Jobling begins.

"I mean," returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming
modesty, "that I can't make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend
Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can't
make him out."

Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, "A few!"

"I have seen something of the profession and something of life,
Tony," says Mr. Guppy, "and it's seldom I can't make a man out,
more or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and
secret (though I don't believe he is ever sober), I never came
across. Now, he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a
soul about him, and he is reported to be immensely rich; and
whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed
pawnbroker, or a money-lender--all of which I have thought likely
at different times--it might pay you to knock up a sort of
knowledge of him. I don't see why you shouldn't go in for it, when
everything else suits."

Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on
the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the
ceiling. After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their
hands in their pockets, and look at one another.

"If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy with a
sigh. "But there are chords in the human mind--"

Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-
water, Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony
Jobling and informing him that during the vacation and while things
are slack, his purse, "as far as three or four or even five pound
goes," will be at his disposal. "For never shall it be said," Mr.
Guppy adds with emphasis, "that William Guppy turned his back upon
his friend!"

The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that
Mr. Jobling says with emotion, "Guppy, my trump, your fist!"  Mr.
Guppy presents it, saying, "Jobling, my boy, there it is!"  Mr.
Jobling returns, "Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!"  
Mr. Guppy replies, "Jobling, we have."

They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,
"Thank you, Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take another glass
for old acquaintance sake."

"Krook's last lodger died there," observes Mr. Guppy in an
incidental way.

"Did he though!" says Mr. Jobling.

"There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don't mind that?"

"No," says Mr. Jobling, "I don't mind it; but he might as well have
died somewhere else. It's devilish odd that he need go and die at
MY place!"  Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times
returning to it with such remarks as, "There are places enough to
die in, I should think!" or, "He wouldn't have liked my dying at
HIS place, I dare say!"

However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to
dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home,
as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay.
Mr. Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat
and conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He
soon returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and
that he has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back
premises, sleeping "like one o'clock."

"Then I'll pay," says Mr. Guppy, "and we'll go and see him. Small,
what will it be?"

Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one
hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: "Four veals and
hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer
cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and
six breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four
half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums
is eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and
six in half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!"

Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed
dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a
little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to
read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to
himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run
his eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night
and to have disappeared under the bedclothes.

Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where
they find Krook still sleeping like one o'clock, that is to say,
breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite
insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On
the table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-
bottle and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this
liquor that even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they
open and shut and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.

"Hold up here!" says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the
old man another shake. "Mr. Krook! Halloa, sir!"

But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a
spirituous heat smouldering in it. "Did you ever see such a stupor
as he falls into, between drink and sleep?" says Mr. Guppy.

"If this is his regular sleep," returns Jobling, rather alarmed,
"it'll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking."

"It's always more like a fit than a nap," says Mr. Guppy, shaking
him again. "Halloa, your lordship! Why, he might be robbed fifty
times over! Open your eyes!"

After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his
visitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on
another, and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens
his parched lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as
insensible as before.

"He is alive, at any rate," says Mr. Guppy. "How are you, my Lord
Chancellor. I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little
matter of business."

The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the
least consciousness. After some minutes he makes an attempt to
rise. They help him up, and he staggers against the wall and
stares at them.

"How do you do, Mr. Krook?" says Mr. Guppy in some discomfiture.
"How do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Krook. I hope
you are pretty well?"

The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at
nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face
against the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up
against it, and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The
air, the movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the
combination of these things recovers him. He comes back pretty
steadily, adjusting his fur cap on his head and looking keenly at
them.

"Your servant, gentlemen; I've been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake,
odd times."

"Rather so, indeed, sir," responds Mr. Guppy.

"What? You've been a-trying to do it, have you?" says the
suspicious Krook.

"Only a little," Mr. Guppy explains.

The old man's eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up,
examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.

"I say!" he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. "Somebody's
been making free here!"

"I assure you we found it so," says Mr. Guppy. "Would you allow me
to get it filled for you?"

"Yes, certainly I would!" cries Krook in high glee. "Certainly I
would! Don't mention it! Get it filled next door--Sol's Arms--the
Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know ME!"

He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy that that gentleman,
with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and
hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it
in his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly.

"But, I say," he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting
it, "this ain't the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. This is
eighteenpenny!"

"I thought you might like that better," says Mr. Guppy.

"You're a nobleman, sir," returns Krook with another taste, and his
hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. "You're a
baron of the land."

Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his
friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object
of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never
gets beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety),
takes time to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of
him. "You'd like to see the room, young man?" he says. "Ah! It's
a good room! Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap
and soda. Hi! It's worth twice the rent, letting alone my company
when you want it and such a cat to keep the mice away."

Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them
upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be
and also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug
up from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded--
for the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Guppy, associated as
he is with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other
famous claims on his professional consideration--and it is agreed
that Mr. Weevle shall take possession on the morrow. Mr. Weevle
and Mr. Guppy then repair to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, where
the personal introduction of the former to Mr. Snagsby is effected
and (more important) the vote and interest of Mrs. Snagsby are
secured. They then report progress to the eminent Smallweed,
waiting at the office in his tall hat for that purpose, and
separate, Mr. Guppy explaining that he would terminate his little
entertainment by standing treat at the play but that there are
chords in the human mind which would render it a hollow mockery.

On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears
at Krook's, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes
himself in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters
stare at him in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the
following day Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of
young fellow, borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a
hammer of his landlord and goes to work devising apologies for
window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging
up his two teacups, milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth
of little hooks, like a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.

But what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next
after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only
whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of
copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The
Divinities of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty,
representing ladies of title and fashion in every variety of smirk
that art, combined with capital, is capable of producing. With
these magnificent portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box
during his seclusion among the market-gardens, he decorates his
apartment; and as the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every
variety of fancy dress, plays every variety of musical instrument,
fondles every variety of dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and
is backed up by every variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the
result is very imposing.

But fashion is Mr. Weevle's, as it was Tony Jobling's, weakness.
To borrow yesterday's paper from the Sol's Arms of an evening and
read about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are
shooting across the fashionable sky in every direction is
unspeakable consolation to him. To know what member of what
brilliant and distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and
distinguished feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no
less brilliant and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives
him a thrill of joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of
British Beauty is about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy
marriages are on the tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in
circulation, is to become acquainted with the most glorious
destinies of mankind. Mr. Weevle reverts from this intelligence to
the Galaxy portraits implicated, and seems to know the originals,
and to be known of them.

For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices
as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as
to carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades
of evening have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is
not visited by Mr. Guppy or by a small light in his likeness
quenched in a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room--where he has
inherited the deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of
ink--and talks to Krook or is "very free," as they call it in the
court, commendingly, with any one disposed for conversation.
Wherefore, Mrs. Piper, who leads the court, is impelled to offer
two remarks to Mrs. Perkins: firstly, that if her Johnny was to
have whiskers, she could wish 'em to be identically like that young
man's; and secondly, "Mark my words, Mrs. Perkins, ma'am, and don't
you be surprised, Lord bless you, if that young man comes in at
last for old Krook's money!"

CHAPTER XXI

The Smallweed Family

In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one
of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin
Smallweed, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth
as Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the
office and its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little
narrow street, always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in
on all sides like a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of
an old forest tree whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as
the Smallweed smack of youth.

There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several
generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no
child, until Mr. Smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak
in her intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish
state. With such infantine graces as a total want of observation,
memory, understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to
fall asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed's grandmother
has undoubtedly brightened the family.

Mr. Smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a
helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper,
limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever
held, the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small
collection of the hardest facts. In respect of ideality,
reverence, wonder, and other such phrenological attributes, it is
no worse off than it used to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed's
grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a
grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single
butterfly.

The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of
Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting
species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired
into holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan's
god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of
it. Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in
which all the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he
broke something--something necessary to his existence, therefore it
couldn't have been his heart--and made an end of his career. As
his character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity
school in a complete course, according to question and answer, of
those ancient people the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently
quoted as an example of the failure of education.

His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of
"going out" early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp
scrivener's office at twelve years old. There the young gentleman
improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and
developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the
discounting profession. Going out early in life and marrying late,
as his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and anxious-
minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and marrying
late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed, twins.
During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family
tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to
marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has
discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy-
tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever.
Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it and
that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have
been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something
depressing on their minds.

At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below
the level of the street--a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only
ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest
of sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character
no bad allegorical representation of Grandfather Smallweed's mind--
seated in two black horsehair porter's chairs, one on each side of
the fire-place, the superannuated Mr. and Mrs. Smallweed while away
the rosy hours. On the stove are a couple of trivets for the pots
and kettles which it is Grandfather Smallweed's usual occupation to
watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a sort
of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when it
is in action. Under the venerable Mr. Smallweed's seat and guarded
by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain
property to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion with
which he is always provided in order that he may have something to
throw at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she
makes an allusion to money--a subject on which he is particularly
sensitive.

"And where's Bart?" Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart's
twin sister.

"He an't come in yet," says Judy.

"It's his tea-time, isn't it?"

"No."

"How much do you mean to say it wants then?"

"Ten minutes."

"Hey?"

"Ten minutes." (Loud on the part of Judy.)

"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Ten minutes."

Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head
at the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money
and screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, "Ten
ten-pound notes!"

Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her.

"Drat you, be quiet!" says the good old man.

The effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only
doubles up Mrs. Smallweed's head against the side of her porter's
chair and causes her to present, when extricated by her
granddaughter, a highly unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary
exertion recoils on Mr. Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into
HIS porter's chair like a broken puppet. The excellent old
gentleman being at these times a mere clothes-bag with a black
skull-cap on the top of it, does not present a very animated
appearance until he has undergone the two operations at the hands
of his granddaughter of being shaken up like a great bottle and
poked and punched like a great bolster. Some indication of a neck
being developed in him by these means, he and the sharer of his
life's evening again fronting one another in their two porter's
chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on their post by
the Black Serjeant, Death.

Judy the twin is worthy company for these associates. She is so
indubitably sister to Mr. Smallweed the younger that the two
kneaded into one would hardly make a young person of average
proportions, while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned
family likeness to the monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe
and cap she might walk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-
organ without exciting much remark as an unusual specimen. Under
existing circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare
gown of brown stuff.

Judy never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at
any game. She once or twice fell into children's company when she
was about ten years old, but the children couldn't get on with
Judy, and Judy couldn't get on with them. She seemed like an
animal of another species, and there was instinctive repugnance on
both sides. It is very doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh.
She has so rarely seen the thing done that the probabilities are
strong the other way. Of anything like a youthful laugh, she
certainly can have no conception. If she were to try one, she
would find her teeth in her way, modelling that action of her face,
as she has unconsciously modelled all its other expressions, on her
pattern of sordid age. Such is Judy.

And her twin brother couldn't wind up a top for his life. He knows
no more of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor than he
knows of the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap-
frog or at cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But
he is so much the better off than his sister that on his narrow
world of fact an opening has dawned into such broader regions as
lie within the ken of Mr. Guppy. Hence his admiration and his
emulation of that shining enchanter.

Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-
iron tea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers. The
bread she puts on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much
of it) in a small pewter plate. Grandfather Smallweed looks hard
after the tea as it is served out and asks Judy where the girl is.

"Charley, do you mean?" says Judy.

"Hey?" from Grandfather Smallweed.

"Charley, do you mean?"

This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed, who, chuckling as
usual at the trivets, cries, "Over the water! Charley over the
water, Charley over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley
over the water, over the water to Charley!" and becomes quite
energetic about it. Grandfather looks at the cushion but has not
sufficiently recovered his late exertion.

"Ha!" he says when there is silence. "If that's her name. She
eats a deal. It would be better to allow her for her keep."

Judy, with her brother's wink, shakes her head and purses up her
mouth into no without saying it.

"No?" returns the old man. "Why not?"

"She'd want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less," says Judy.

"Sure?"

Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning and calls, as she
scrapes the butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste
and cuts it into slices, "You, Charley, where are you?"  Timidly
obedient to the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large
bonnet, with her hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing
brush in one of them, appears, and curtsys.

"What work are you about now?" says Judy, making an ancient snap at
her like a very sharp old beldame.

"I'm a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss," replies Charley.

"Mind you do it thoroughly, and don't loiter. Shirking won't do
for me. Make haste! Go along!" cries Judy with a stamp upon the
ground. "You girls are more trouble than you're worth, by half."

On this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the
butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother,
looking in at the window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she
opens the street-door.

"Aye, aye, Bart!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Here you are, hey?"

"Here I am," says Bart.

"Been along with your friend again, Bart?"

Small nods.

"Dining at his expense, Bart?"

Small nods again.

"That's right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take
warning by his foolish example. That's the use of such a friend.
The only use you can put him to," says the venerable sage.

His grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as
he might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a
slight wink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four
old faces then hover over teacups like a company of ghastly
cherubim, Mrs. Smallweed perpetually twitching her head and
chattering at the trivets and Mr. Smallweed requiring to be
repeatedly shaken up like a large black draught.

"Yes, yes," says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of
wisdom. "That's such advice as your father would have given you,
Bart. You never saw your father. More's the pity. He was my true
son."  Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was
particularly pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear.

"He was my true son," repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread
and butter on his knee, "a good accountant, and died fifteen years
ago."

Mrs. Smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with
"Fifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box,
fifteen hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and
hid!"  Her worthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter,
immediately discharges the cushion at her, crushes her against the
side of her chair, and falls back in his own, overpowered. His
appearance, after visiting Mrs. Smallweed with one of these
admonitions, is particularly impressive and not wholly
prepossessing, firstly because the exertion generally twists his
black skull-cap over one eye and gives him an air of goblin
rakishness, secondly because he mutters violent imprecations
against Mrs. Smallweed, and thirdly because the contrast between
those powerful expressions and his powerless figure is suggestive
of a baleful old malignant who would be very wicked if he could.
All this, however, is so common in the Smallweed family circle that
it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely shaken and
has his internal feathers beaten up, the cushion is restored to its
usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps with her cap
adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again, ready to
be bowled down like a ninepin.

Some time elapses in the present instance before the old gentleman
is sufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even then he
mixes it up with several edifying expletives addressed to the
unconscious partner of his bosom, who holds communication with
nothing on earth but the trivets. As thus: "If your father, Bart,
had lived longer, he might have been worth a deal of money--you
brimstone chatterer!--but just as he was beginning to build up the
house that he had been making the foundations for, through many a
year--you jade of a magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you
mean!--he took ill and died of a low fever, always being a sparing
and a spare man, fule been a good son, and I think I meant to
have been one. But I wasn't. I was a thundering bad son, that's
the long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody."

"Surprising!" cries the old man.

"However," Mr. George resumes, "the less said about it, the better
now. Come! You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two
months' interest! (Bosh! It's all correct. You needn't be afraid
to order the pipe. Here's the new bill, and here's the two months'
interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it
together in my business.)"

Mr. George sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the
parlour while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy to two
black leathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he
secures the document he has just received, and from the other takes
another similar document which hl of business care--I should like to throw a
cat at you instead of a cushion, and I will too if you make such a
confounded fool of yourself!--and your mother, who was a prudent
woman as dry as a chip, just dwindled away like touchwood after you
and Judy were born--you are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig.
You're a head of swine!"

Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect
in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of
cups and saucers and from the bottom of the teapot for the little
charwoman's evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the
iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of
loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence.

"But your father and me were partners, Bart," says the old
gentleman, "and when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there
is. It's rare for you both that you went out early in life--Judy
to the flower business, and you to the law. You won't want to
spend it. You'll get your living without it, and put more to it.
When I am gone, Judy will go back to the flower business and you'll
still stick to the law."

One might infer from Judy's appearance that her business rather lay
with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been
apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A
close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her
brother's, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being
gone, some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some
resentful opinion that it is time he went.

"Now, if everybody has done," says Judy, completing her
preparations, "I'll have that girl in to her tea. She would never
leave off if she took it by herself in the kitchen."

Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes,
sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter.
In the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed
appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the
remotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and
pouncing on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is
wonderful, evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving
seldom reached by the oldest practitioners.

"Now, don't stare about you all the afternoon," cries Judy, shaking
her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance
which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, "but take your
victuals and get back to your work."

"Yes, miss," says Charley.

"Don't say yes," returns Miss Smallweed, "for I know what you girls
are. Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe
you."

Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so
disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not
to gormandize, which "in you girls," she observes, is disgusting.
Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the
general subject of girls but for a knock at the door.

"See who it is, and don't chew when you open it!" cries Judy.

The object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss
Smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the
bread and butter together and launching two or three dirty tea-cups
into the ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers
the eating and drinking terminated.

"Now! Who is it, and what's wanted?" says the snappish Judy.

It is one Mr. George, it appears. Without other announcement or
ceremony, Mr. George walks in.

"Whew!" says Mr. George. "You are hot here. Always a fire, eh?
Well! Perhaps you do right to get used to one."  Mr. George makes
the latter remark to himself as he nods to Grandfather Smallweed.

"Ho! It's you!" cries the old gentleman. "How de do? How de do?"

"Middling," replies Mr. George, taking a chair. "Your
granddaughter I have had the honour of seeing before; my service to
you, miss."

"This is my grandson," says Grandfather Smallweed. "You ha'n't
seen him before. He is in the law and not much at home."

"My service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like
his sister. He is devilish like his sister," says Mr. George,
laying a great and not altogether complimentary stress on his last
adjective.

"And how does the world use you, Mr. George?" Grandfather Smallweed
inquires, slowly rubbing his legs.

"Pretty much as usual. Like a football."

He is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking,
with crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy
and powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been
used to a pretty rough life. What is curious about him is that he
sits forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing
space for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid
aside. His step too is measured and heavy and would go well with a
weighty clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his
mouth is set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a
great moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open
palm of his broad brown hand upon it is to the same effect.
Altogether one might guess Mr. George to have been a trooper once
upon a time.

A special contrast Mr. George makes to the Smallweed family.
Trooper was never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him.
It is a broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure and
their stunted forms, his large manner filling any amount of room
and their little narrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their
sharp spare tones, are in the strongest and the strangest
opposition. As he sits in the middle of the grim parlour, leaning
a little forward, with his hands upon his thighs and his elbows
squared, he looks as though, if he remained there long, he would
absorb into himself the whole family and the whole four-roomed
house, extra little back-kitchen and all.

"Do you rub your legs to rub life into 'em?" he asks of Grandfather
Smallweed after looking round the room.

"Why, it's partly a habit, Mr. George, and--yes--it partly helps
the circulation," he replies.

"The cir-cu-la-tion!" repeats Mr. George, folding his arms upon his
chest and seeming to become two sizes larger. "Not much of that, I
should think."

"Truly I'm old, Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed. "But I
can carry my years. I'm older than HER," nodding at his wife, "and
see what she is? You're a brimstone chatterer!" with a sudden
revival of his late hostility.

"Unlucky old soul!" says Mr. George, turning his head in that
direction. "Don't scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her
poor cap half off her head and her poor hair all in a muddle. Hold
up, ma'am. That's better. There we are! Think of your mother,
Mr. Smallweed," says Mr. George, coming back to his seat from
assisting her, "if your wife an't enough."

"I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr. George?" the old man
hints with a leer.

The colour of Mr. George's face rather deepens as he replies, "Why
no. I wasn't."

"I am astonished at it."

"So am I. I ought to have hands to Mr. George, who twists
it up for a pipelight. As the old man inspects, through his
glasses, every up-stroke and down-stroke of both documents before
he releases them from their leathern prison, and as he counts the
money three times over and requires Judy to say every word she
utters at least twice, and is as tremulously slow of speech and
action as it is possible to be, this business is a long time in
progress. When it is quite concluded, and not before, he
disengages his ravenous eyes and fingers from it and answers Mr.
George's last remark by saying, "Afraid to order the pipe? We are
not so mercenary as that, sir. Judy, see directly to the pipe and
the glass of cold brandy-and-water for Mr. George."

The sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all
this time except when they have been engrossed by the black
leathern cases, retire together, generally disdainful of the
visitor, but leaving him to the old man as two young cubs might
leave a traveller to the parental bear.

"And there you sit, I suppose, all the day long, eh?" says Mr.
George with folded arms.

"Just so, just so," the old man nods.

"And don't you occupy yourself at all?"

"I watch the fire--and the boiling and the roasting--"

"When there is any," says Mr. George with great expression.

"Just so. When there is any."

"Don't you read or get read to?"

The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. "No, no. We
have never been readers in our family. It don't pay. Stuff.
Idleness. Folly. No, no!"

"There's not much to choose between your two states," says the
visitor in a key too low for the old man's dull hearing as he looks
from him to the old woman and back again. "I say!" in a louder
voice.

"I hear you."

"You'll sell me up at last, I suppose, when I am a day in arrear."

"My dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, stretching out both
hands to embrace him. "Never! Never, my dear friend! But my
friend in the city that I got to lend you the money--HE might!"

"Oh! You can't answer for him?" says Mr. George, finishing the
inquiry in his lower key with the words "You lying old rascal!"

"My dear friend, he is not to be depended on. I wouldn't trust
him. He will have his bond, my dear friend."

"Devil doubt him," says Mr. George. Charley appearing with a tray,
on which are the pipe, a small paper of tobacco, and the brandy-
and-water, he asks her, "How do you come here! You haven't got the
family face."

"I goes out to work, sir," returns Charley.

The trooper (if trooper he be or have been) takes her bonnet off,
with a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head.
"You give the house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of
youth as much as it wants fresh air."  Then he dismisses her,
lights his pipe, and drinks to Mr. Smallweed's friend in the city--
the one solitary flight of that esteemed old gentleman's
imagination.

"So you think he might be hard upon me, eh?"

"I think he might--I am afraid he would. I have known him do it,"
says Grandfather Smallweed incautiously, "twenty times."

Incautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing
over the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers
"Twenty thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money-box,
twenty guineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty--" and is
then cut short by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom
this singular experiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her
face as it crushes her in the usual manner.

"You're a brimstone idiot. You're a scorpion--a brimstone
scorpion! You're a sweltering toad. You're a chattering
clattering broomstick witch that ought to be burnt!" gasps the old
man, prostrate in his chair. "My dear friend, will you shake me up
a little?"

Mr. George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at
the other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance
by the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright
in his chalr as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds
whether or no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him
and shake him into his grave. Resisting the temptation, but
agitating him violently enough to make his head roll like a
harlequin's, he puts him smartly down in his chair again and
adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub that the old man winks with
both eyes for a minute afterwards.

"O Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed. "That'll do. Thank you, my dear
friend, that'll do. Oh, dear me, I'm out of breath. O Lord!"  And
Mr. Smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear
friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever.

The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair
and falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the
philosophical reflection, "The name of your friend in the city
begins with a D, comrade, and you're about right respecting the
bond."

"Did you speak, Mr. George?" inquires the old man.

The trooper shakes his head, and leaning forward with his right
elbow on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while
his other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in
a martial manner, continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr.
Smallweed with grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of
smoke away in order that he may see him the more clearly.

"I take it," he says, making just as much and as little change in
his position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips with
a round, full action, "that I am the only man alive (or dead
either) that gets the value of a pipe out of YOU?"

"Well," returns the old man, "it's true that I don't see company,
Mr. George, and that I don't treat. I can't afford to it. But as
you, in your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition--"

"Why, it's not for the value of it; that's no great thing. It was
a fancy to get it out of you. To have something in for my money."

"Ha! You're prudent, prudent, sir!" cries Grandfather Smallweed,
rubbing his legs.

"Very. I always was."  Puff. "It's a sure sign of my prudence
that I ever found the way here."  Puff. "Also, that I am what I
am."  Puff. "I am well known to be prudent," says Mr. George,
composedly smoking. "I rose in life that way."

"Don't he down-hearted, sir. You may rise yet."

Mr. George laughs and drinks.

"Ha'n't you no relations, now," asks Grandfather Smallweed with a
twinkle in his eyes, "who would pay off this little principal or
who would lend you a good name or two that I could persuade my
friend in the city to make you a further advance upon? Two good
names would be sufficient for my friend in the city. Ha'n't you no
such relations, Mr. George?"

Mr. George, still composedly smoking, replies, "If I had, I
shouldn't trouble them. I have been trouble enough to my
belongings in my day. It MAY be a very good sort of penitence in a
vagabond, who has wasted the best time of his life, to go back then
to decent people that he never was a credit to and live upon them,
but it's not my sort. The best kind of amends then for having gone
away is to keep away, in my opinion."

"But natural affection, Mr. George," hints Grandfather Smallweed.

"For two good names, hey?" says Mr. George, shaking his head and
still composedly smoking. "No. That's not my sort either."

Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually sliding down in his chair
since his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes with a
voice in it calling for Judy. That houri, appearing, shakes him up
in the usual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain
near him. For he seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble
of repeating his late attentions.

"Ha!" he observes when he is in trim again. "If you could have
traced out the captain, Mr. George, it would have been the making
of you. If when you first came here, in consequence of our
advertisement in the newspapers--when I say 'our,' I'm alluding to
the advertisements of my friend in the city, and one or two others
who embark their capital in the same way, and are so friendly
towards me as sometimes to give me a lift with my little pittance--
if at that time you could have helped us, Mr. George, it would have
been the making of you."

"I was willing enough to be 'made,' as you call it," says Mr.
George, smoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the
entrance of Judy he has been in some measure disturbed by a
fascination, not of the admiring kind, which obliges him to look at
her as she stands by her grandfather's chair, "but on the whole, I
am glad I wasn't now."

"Why, Mr. George? In the name of--of brimstone, why?" says
Grandfather Smallweed with a plain appearance of exasperation.
(Brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs.
Smallweed in her slumber.)

"For two reasons, comrade."

"And what two reasons, Mr. George? In the name of the--"

"Of our friend in the city?" suggests Mr. George, composedly
drinking.

"Aye, if you like. What two reasons?"

"In the first place," returns Mr. George, but still looking at Judy
as if she being so old and so like her grandfather it is
indifferent which of the two he addresses, "you gentlemen took me
in. You advertised that Mr. Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to
the saying 'Once a captain, always a captain') was to hear of
something to his advantage."

"Well?" returns the old man shrilly and sharply.

"Well!" says Mr. George, smoking on. "It wouldn't have been much
to his advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill
and judgment trade of London."

"How do you know that? Some of his rich relations might have paid
his debts or compounded for 'em. Besides, he had taken US in. He
owed us immense sums all round. I would sooner have strangled him
than had no return. If I sit here thinking of him," snarls the old
man, holding up his impotent ten fingers, "I want to strangle him
now."  And in a sudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the
unoffending Mrs. Smallweed, but it passes harmlessly on one side of
her chair.

"I don't need to be told," returns the trooper, taking his pipe
from his lips for a moment and carrying his eyes back from
following the progress of the cushion to the pipe-bowl which is
burning low, "that he carried on heavily and went to ruin. I have
been at his right hand many a day when he was charging upon ruin
full-gallop. I was with him when he was sick and well, rich and
poor. I laid this hand upon him after he had run through
everything and broken down everything beneath him--when he held a
pistol to his head."

"I wish he had let it off," says the benevolent old man, "and blown
his head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!"

"That would have been a smash indeed," returns the trooper coolly;
"any way, he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone
by, and I am glad I never found him, when he was neither, to lead
to a result so much to his advantage. That's reason number one."

"I hope number two's as good?" snarls the old man.

"Why, no. It's more of a selfish reason. If I had found him, I
must have gone to the other world to look. He was there."

"How do you know he was there?"

"He wasn't here."

"How do you know he wasn't here?"

"Don't lose your temper as well as your money," says Mr. George,
calmly knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "He was drowned long
before. I am convinced of it. He went over a ship's side.
Whether intentionally or accidentally, I don't know. Perhaps your
friend in the city does. Do you know what that tune is, Mr.
Smallweed?" he adds after breaking off to whistle one, accompanied
on the table with the empty pipe.

"Tune!" replied the old man. "No. We never have tunes here."

"That's the Dead March in Saul. They bury soldiers to it, so it's
the natural end of the subject. Now, if your pretty granddaughter
--excuse me, miss--will condescend to take care of this pipe for two
months, we shall save the cost of one next time. Good evening, Mr.
Smallweed!"

"My dear friend!" the old man gives him both his hands.

"So you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me if I
fall in a payment?" says the trooper, looking down upon him like a
giant.

"My dear friend, I am afraid he will," returns the old man, looking
up at him like a pygmy.

Mr. George laughs, and with a glance at Mr. Smallweed and a parting
salutation to the scornful Judy, strides out of the parlour,
clashing imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he
goes.

"You're a damned rogue," says the old gentleman, making a hideous
grimace at the door as he shuts it. "But I'll lime you, you dog,
I'll lime you!"

After this amiable remark, his spirit soars into those enchanting
regions of reflection which its education and pursuits have opened
to it, and again he and Mrs. Smallweed while away the rosy hours,
two unrelieved sentinels forgotten as aforesaid by the Black
Serjeant.

While the twain are faithful to their post, Mr. George strides
through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-
enough face. It is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing
in. He stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides
to go to Astley's Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the
horses and the feats of strength; looks at the weapons with a
critical eye; disapproves of the combats as giving evidences of
unskilful swordsmanship; but is touched home by the sentiments. In
the last scene, when the Emperor of Tartary gets up into a cart and
condescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with
the Union Jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion.

The theatre over, Mr. George comes across the water again and makes
his way to that curious region lying about the Haymarket and
Leicester Square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent
foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts, fighting-
men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses, exhibitions,
and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of sight.
Penetrating to the heart of this region, he arrives by a court and
a long whitewashed passage at a great brick building composed of
bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of
which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted GEORGE'S
SHOOTING GALLERY, &c.

Into George's Shooting Gallery, &c., he goes; and in it there are
gaslights (partly turned off now), and two whitened targets for
rifle-shooting, and archery accommodation, and fencing appliances,
and all necessaries for the British art of boxing. None of these
sports or exercises being pursued in George's Shooting Gallery to-
night, which is so devoid of company that a little grotesque man
with a large head has it all to himself and lies asleep upon the
floor.

The little man is dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green-
baize apron and cap; and his face and hands are dirty with
gunpowder and begrimed with the loading of guns. As he lies in the
light before a glaring white target, the black upon him shines
again. Not far off is the strong, rough, primitive table with a
vice upon it at which he has been working. He is a little man with
a face all crushed together, who appears, from a certain blue and
speckled appearance that one of his cheeks presents, to have been
blown up, in the way of business, at some odd time or times.

"Phil!" says the trooper in a quiet voice.

"All right!" cries Phil, scrambling to his feet.

"Anything been doing?"

"Flat as ever so much swipes," says Phil. "Five dozen rifle and a
dozen pistol. As to aim!"  Phil gives a howl at the recollection.

"Shut up shop, Phil!"

As Phil moves about to execute this order, it appears that he is
lame, though able to move very quickly. On the speckled side of
his face he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy
black one, which want of uniformity gives him a very singular and
rather sinister appearance. Everything seems to have happened to
his hands that could possibly take place consistently with the
retention of all the fingers, for they are notched, and seamed, and
crumpled all over. He appears to be very strong and lifts heavy
benches about as if he had no idea what weight was. He has a
curious way of limping round the gallery with his shoulder against
the wall and tacking off at objects he wants to lay hold of instead
of going straight to them, which has left a smear all round the
four walls, conventionally called "Phil's mark."

This custodian of George's Gallery in George's absence concludes
his proceedings, when he has locked the great doors and turned out
all the lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging out
from a wooden cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. These
being drawn to opposite ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his
own bed and Phil makes his.

"Phil!" says the master, walking towards him without his coat and
waistcoat, and looking more soldierly than ever in his braces.
"You were found in a doorway, weren't you?"

"Gutter," says Phil. "Watchman tumbled over me."

"Then vagabondizing came natural to YOU from the beginning."

"As nat'ral as possible," says Phil.

"Good night!"

"Good night, guv'ner."

Phil cannot even go straight to bed, but finds it necessary to
shoulder round two sides of the gallery and then tack off at his
mattress. The trooper, after taking a turn or two in the rifle-
distance and looking up at the moon now shining through the
skylights, strides to his own mattress by a shorter route and goes
to bed too.

CHAPTER XXII

Mr. Bucket

Allegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln's Inn Fields, though the
evening is hot, for both Mr. Tulkinghorn's windows are wide open,
and the room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be
desirable characteristics when November comes with fog and sleet or
January with ice and snow, but they have their merits in the sultry
long vacation weather. They enable Allegory, though it has cheeks
like peaches, and knees like bunches of blossoms, and rosy
swellings for calves to its legs and muscles to its arms, to look
tolerably cool to-night.

Plenty of dust comes in at Mr. Tulkinghorn's windows, and plenty
more has generated among his furniture and papers. It lies thick
everywhere. When a breeze from the country that has lost its way
takes fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings
as much dust in the eyes of Allegory as the law-or Mr. Tulkinghorn,
one of its trustiest representatives--may scatter, on occasion, in
the eyes of the laity.

In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which
his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of
earth, animate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits
at one of the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a
hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine
with the best. He has a priceless bin of port in some artful
cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many secrets. When he
dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of
fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he
descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted
mansion, and heralded by a remote reverberation of thundering
doors, comes gravely back encircled by an earthy atmosphere and
carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score
and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so
famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern
grapes.

Mr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys
his wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence
and seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than
ever, he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy,
pondering at that twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows,
associated with darkening woods in the country, and vast blank
shut-up houses in town, and perhaps sparing a thought or two for
himself, and his family history, and his money, and his will--all a
mystery to every one--and that one bachelor friend of his, a man of
the same mould and a lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life
until he was seventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving
(as it is supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave
his gold watch to his hair-dresser one summer evening and walked
leisurely home to the Temple and hanged himself.

But Mr. Tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to ponder at his usual
length. Seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly
and uncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild,
shining man who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer
bids him fill his glass.

"Now, Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "to go over this odd story
again."

"If you please, sir."

"You told me when you were so good as to step round here last
night--"

"For which I must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir;
but I remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that
person, and I thought it possible that you might--just--wish--to--"

Mr. Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to
admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr.
Snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, "I must ask
you to excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure."

"Not at all," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "You told me, Snagsby, that
you put on your hat and came round without mentioning your
intention to your wife. That was prudent I think, because it's not
a matter of such importance that it requires to be mentioned."

"Well, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby, "you see, my little woman is--not
to put too fine a point upon it--inquisitive. She's inquisitive.
Poor little thing, she's liable to spasms, and it's good for her to
have her mind employed. In consequence of which she employs it--I
should say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether
it concerns her or not--especially not. My little woman has a very
active mind, sir."

Mr. Snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his
hand, "Dear me, very fine wine indeed!"

"Therefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?" says Mr.
Tulkinghorn. "And to-night too?"

"Yes, sir, and to-night, too. My little woman is at present in--
not to put too fine a point on it--in a pious state, or in what she
considers such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the
name they go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He
has a great deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am
not quite favourable to his style myself. That's neither here nor
there. My little woman being engaged in that way made it easier
for me to step round in a quiet manner."

Mr. Tulkinghorn assents. "Fill your glass, Snagsby."

"Thank you, sir, I am sure," returns the stationer with his cough
of deference. "This is wonderfully fine wine, sir!"

"It is a rare wine now," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "It is fifty years
old."

"Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure.
It might be--any age almost."  After rendering this general tribute
to the port, Mr. Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind
his hand for drinking anything so precious.

"Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?" asks Mr.
Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty
smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.

"With pleasure, sir."

Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer
repeats Jo's statement made to the assembled guests at his house.
On coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and
breaks off with, "Dear me, sir, I wasn't aware there was any other
gentleman present!"

Mr. Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face
between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table,
a person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he
himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either
of the windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have
not creaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this
third person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and
stick in his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet
listener. He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in
black, of about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr.
Snagsby as if he were going to take his portrait, there is nothing
remarkable about him at first sight but his ghostly manner of
appearing.

"Don't mind this gentleman," says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his quiet way.
"This is only Mr. Bucket."

"Oh, indeed, sir?" returns the stationer, expressing by a cough
that he is quite in the dark as to who Mr. Bucket may be.

"I wanted him to hear this story," says the lawyer, "because I have
half a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very
intelligent in such things. What do you say to this, Bucket?"

"It's very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on,
and he's not to be found on his old lay, if Mr. Snagsby don't
object to go down with me to Tom-all-Alone's and point him out, we
can have him here in less than a couple of hours' time. I can do
it without Mr. Snagsby, of course, but this is the shortest way."

"Mr. Bucket is a detective officer, Snagsby," says the lawyer in
explanation.

"Is he indeed, sir?" says Mr. Snagsby with a strong tendency in his
clump of hair to stand on end.

"And if you have no real objection to accompany Mr. Bucket to the
place in question," pursues the lawyer, "I shall feel obliged to
you if you will do so."

In a moment's hesitation on the part of Mr. Snagsby, Bucket dips
down to the bottom of his mind.

"Don't you be afraid of hurting the boy," he says. "You won't do
that. It's all right as far as the boy's concerned. We shall only
bring him here to ask him a question or so I want to put to him,
and he'll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It'll be a
good job for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the
boy sent away all right. Don't you be afraid of hurting him; you
an't going to do that."

"Very well, Mr. Tulkinghorn!" cries Mr. Snagsby cheerfully. And
reassured, "Since that's the case--"

"Yes! And lookee here, Mr. Snagsby," resumes Bucket, taking him
aside by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and
speaking in a confidential tone. "You're a man of the world, you
know, and a man of business, and a man of sense. That's what YOU
are."

"I am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion," returns
the stationer with his cough of modesty, "but--"

"That's what YOU are, you know," says Bucket. "Now, it an't
necessary to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which
is a business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and
have his senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an
uncle in your business once)--it an't necessary to say to a man
like you that it's the best and wisest way to keep little matters
like this quiet. Don't you see? Quiet!"

"Certainly, certainly," returns the other.

"I don't mind telling YOU," says Bucket with an engaging appearance
of frankness, "that as far as I can understand it, there seems to
be a doubt whether this dead person wasn't entitled to a little
property, and whether this female hasn't been up to some games
respecting that property, don't you see?"

"Oh!" says Mr. Snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly.

"Now, what YOU want," pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr. Snagsby on
the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, "is that every
person should have their rights according to justice. That's what
YOU want."

"To be sure," returns Mr. Snagsby with a nod.

"On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a--do you call
it, in your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle
used to call it."

"Why, I generally say customer myself," replies Mr. Snagsby.

"You're right!" returns Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him quite
affectionately. "--On account of which, and at the same time to
oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in
confidence, to Tom-all-Alone's and to keep the whole thing quiet
ever afterwards and never mention it to any one. That's about your
intentions, if I understand you?"

"You are right, sir. You are right," says Mr. Snagsby.

"Then here's your hat," returns his new friend, quite as intimate
with it as if he had made it; "and if you're ready, I am."

They leave Mr. Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his
unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the
streets.

"You don't happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of
Gridley, do you?" says Bucket in friendly converse as they descend
the stairs.

"No," says Mr. Snagsby, considering, "I don't know anybody of that
name. Why?"

"Nothing particular," says Bucket; "only having allowed his temper
to get a little the better of him and having been threatening some
respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I
have got against him--which it's a pity that a man of sense should
do."

As they walk along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that
however quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some
undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is
going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed
purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off,
sharply, at the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a
police-constable on his beat, Mr. Snagsby notices that both the
constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come
towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and
to gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind
some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek
hair twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost
without glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the
young man, looking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part
Mr. Bucket notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as
the great mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch,
composed of not much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he
wears in his shirt.

When they come at last to Tom-all-Alone's, Mr. Bucket stops for a
moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull's-eye from the
constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own
particular bull's-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors,
Mr. Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street,
undrained, unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water--
though the roads are dry elsewhere--and reeking with such smells
and sights that he, who has lived in London all his life, can
scarce believe his senses. Branching from this street and its
heaps of ruins are other streets and courts so infamous that Mr.
Snagsby sickens in body and mind and feels as if he were going
every moment deeper down into the infernal gulf.

"Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby," says Bucket as a kind of shabby
palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd.
"Here's the fever coming up the street!"

As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of
attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of
horrible faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind
walls, and with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning,
thenceforth flits about them until they leave the place.

"Are those the fever-houses, Darby?"  Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he
turns his bull's-eye on a line of stinking ruins.

Darby replies that "all them are," and further that in all, for
months and months, the people "have been down by dozens" and have
been carried out dead and dying "like sheep with the rot."  Bucket
observing to Mr. Snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little
poorly, Mr. Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn't breathe
the dreadful air.

There is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few
people are known in Tom-all-Alone's by any Christian sign, there is
much reference to Mr. Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the
Colonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or
the Brick. Mr. Snagsby describes over and over again. There are
conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some
think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is
produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby
and his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from
its squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket.
Whenever they move, and the angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away
and flits about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind
the walls, as before.

At last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough
Subject, lays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough
Subject may be Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr. Snagsby and the
proprietress of the house--a drunken face tied up in a black
bundle, and flaring out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog-
hutch which is her private apartment--leads to the establishment of
this conclusion. Toughy has gone to the doctor's to get a bottle
of stuff for a sick woman but will be here anon.

"And who have we got here to-night?" says Mr. Bucket, opening
another door and glaring in with his bull's-eye. "Two drunken men,
eh? And two women? The men are sound enough," turning back each
sleeper's arm from his face to look at him. "Are these your good
men, my dears?"

"Yes, sir," returns one of the women. "They are our husbands."

"Brickmakers, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"What are you doing here? You don't belong to London."

"No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire."

"Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?"

"Saint Albans."

"Come up on the tramp?"

"We walked up yesterday. There's no work down with us at present,
but we have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I
expect."

"That's not the way to do much good," says Mr. Bucket, turning his
head in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground.

"It an't indeed," replies the woman with a sigh. "Jenny and me
knows it full well."

The room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low
that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the
blackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every
sense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted
air. There are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of
table. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women
sit by the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken
is a very young child.

"Why, what age do you call that little creature?" says Bucket. "It
looks as if it was born yesterday."  He is not at all rough about
it; and as he turns his light gently on the infant, Mr. Snagsby is
strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he
has seen in pictures.

"He is not three weeks old yet, sir," says the woman.

"Is he your child?"

"Mine."

The other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops
down again and kisses it as it lies asleep.

"You seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself," says
Mr. Bucket.

"I was the mother of one like it, master, and it died."

"Ah, Jenny, Jenny!" says the other woman to her. "Better so. Much
better to think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better!"

"Why, you an't such an unnatural woman, I hope," returns Bucket
sternly, "as to wish your own child dead?"

"God knows you are right, master," she returns. "I am not. I'd
stand between it and death with my own life if I could, as true as
any pretty lady."

"Then don't talk in that wrong manner," says Mr. Bucket, mollified
again. "Why do you do it?"

"It's brought into my head, master," returns the woman, her eyes
filling with tears, "when I look down at the child lying so. If it
was never to wake no more, you'd think me mad, I should take on so.
I know that very well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers--warn't
I, Jenny?--and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this
place. Look at them," glancing at the sleepers on the ground.
"Look at the boy you're waiting for, who's gone out to do me a good
turn. Think of the children that your business lays with often and
often, and that YOU see grow up!"

"Well, well," says Mr. Bucket, "you train him respectable, and
he'll be a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you
know."

"I mean to try hard," she answers, wiping her eyes. "But I have
been a-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the
ague, of all the many things that'll come in his way. My master
will be against it, and he'll be beat, and see me beat, and made to
fear his home, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever
so much, and ever so hard, there's no one to help me; and if he
should be turned bad 'spite of all I could do, and the time should
come when I should sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed,
an't it likely I should think of him as he lies in my lap now and
wish he had died as Jenny's child died!"

"There, there!" says Jenny. "Liz, you're tired and ill. Let me
take him."

In doing so, she displaces the mother's dress, but quickly
readjusts it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has
been lying.

"It's my dead child," says Jenny, walking up and down as she
nurses, "that makes me love this child so dear, and it's my dead
child that makes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its
being taken away from her now. While she thinks that, I think what
fortune would I give to have my darling back. But we mean the same
thing, if we knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor
hearts!"

As Mr. Snagsby blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a
step is heard without. Mr. Bucket throws his light into the
doorway and says to Mr. Snagsby, "Now, what do you say to Toughy?
Will HE do?"

"That's Jo," says Mr. Snagsby.

Jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a
magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the
law in not having moved on far enough. Mr. Snagsby, however,
giving him the consolatory assurance, "It's only a job you will be
paid for, Jo," he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr.
Bucket for a little private confabulation, tells his tale
satisfactorily, though out of breath.

"I have squared it with the lad," says Mr. Bucket, returning, "and
it's all right. Now, Mr. Snagsby, we're ready for you."

First, Jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over
the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic
verbal direction that "it's to be all took d'rectly."  Secondly,
Mr. Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual
panacea for an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket
has to take Jo by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on
before him, without which observance neither the Tough Subject nor
any other Subject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln's
Inn Fields. These arrangements completed, they give the women good
night and come out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone's.

By the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit,
they gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling,
and skulking about them until they come to the verge, where
restoration of the bull's-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd,
like a concourse of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is
seen no more. Through the clearer and fresher streets, never so
clear and fresh to Mr. Snagsby's mind as now, they walk and ride
until they come to Mr. Tulkinghorn's gate.

As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers being on
the first floor), Mr. Bucket mentions that he has the key of the
outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a
man so expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to
open the door and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a
note of preparation.

Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning,
and so into Mr. Tulkinghorn's usual room--the room where he drank
his old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned
candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.

Mr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing
to Mr. Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a
little way into this room, when Jo starts and stops.

"What's the matter?" says Bucket in a whisper.

"There she is!" cries Jo.

"Who!"

"The lady!"

A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room,
where the light falls upon it. It is quite still and silent. The
front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of
their entrance and remains like a statue.

"Now, tell me," says Bucket aloud, "how you know that to be the
lady."

"I know the wale," replies Jo, staring, "and the bonnet, and the
gownd."

"Be quite sure of what you say, Tough," returns Bucket, narrowly
observant of him. "Look again."

"I am a-looking as hard as ever I can look," says Jo with starting
eyes, "and that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd."

"What about those rings you told me of?" asks Bucket.

"A-sparkling all over here," says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his
left hand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from
the figure.

The figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand.

"Now, what do you say to that?" asks Bucket.

Jo shakes his head. "Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like
that."

"What are you talking of?" says Bucket, evidently pleased though,
and well pleased too.

"Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller,"
returns Jo.

"Why, you'll tell me I'm my own mother next," says Mr. Bucket. "Do
you recollect the lady's voice?"

"I think I does," says Jo.

The figure speaks. "Was it at all like this? I will speak as long
as you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like
this voice?"

Jo looks aghast at Mr. Bucket. "Not a bit!"

"Then, what," retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, "did you
say it was the lady for?"

"Cos," says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all
shaken in his certainty, "cos that there's the wale, the bonnet,
and the gownd. It is her and it an't her. It an't her hand, nor
yet her rings, nor yet her woice. But that there's the wale, the
bonnet, and the gownd, and they're wore the same way wot she wore
'em, and it's her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov'ring and
hooked it."

"Well!" says Mr. Bucket slightly, "we haven't got much good out of
YOU. But, however, here's five shillings for you. Take care how
you spend it, and don't get yourself into trouble."  Bucket
stealthily tells the coins from one hand into the other like
counters--which is a way he has, his principal use of them being in
these games of skill--and then puts them, in a little pile, into
the boy's hand and takes him out to the door, leaving Mr. Snagsby,
not by any means comfortable under these mysterious circumstances,
alone with the veiled figure. But on Mr. Tulkinghorn's coming into
the room, the veil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking
Frenchwoman is revealed, though her expression is something of the
intensest.

"Thank you, Mademoiselle Hortense," says Mr. Tulkinghorn with his
usual equanimity. "I will give you no further trouble about this
little wager."

"You will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that I am not at
present placed?" says mademoiselle.

"Certainly, certainly!"

"And to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished
recommendation?"

"By all means, Mademoiselle Hortense."

"A word from Mr. Tulkinghorn is so powerful."

"It shall not be wanting, mademoiselle."

"Receive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir."

"Good night."

Mademoiselle goes out with an air of native gentility; and Mr.
Bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of
the ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs,
not without gallantry.

"Well, Bucket?" quoth Mr. Tulkinghorn on his return.

"It's all squared, you see, as I squared it myself, sir. There
an't a doubt that it was the other one with this one's dress on.
The boy was exact respecting colours and everything. Mr. Snagsby,
I promised you as a man that he should be sent away all right.
Don't say it wasn't done!"

"You have kept your word, sir," returns the stationer; "and if I
can be of no further use, Mr. Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little
woman will be getting anxious--"

"Thank you, Snagsby, no further use," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "I am
quite indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already."

"Not at all, sir. I wish you good night."

"You see, Mr. Snagsby," says Mr. Bucket, accompanying him to the
door and shaking hands with him over and over again, "what I like
in you is that you're a man it's of no use pumping; that's what YOU
are. When you know you have done a right thing, you put it away,
and it's done with and gone, and there's an end of it. That's what
YOU do."

"That is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir," returns Mr.
Snagsby.

"No, you don't do yourself justice. It an't what you endeavour to
do," says Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in
the tenderest manner, "it's what you DO. That's what I estimate in
a man in your way of business."

Mr. Snagsby makes a suitable response and goes homeward so confused
by the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his being awake
and out--doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he
goes--doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him.
He is presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable
reality of Mrs. Snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect
beehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to
the police-station with official intelligence of her husband's
being made away with, and who within the last two hours has passed
through every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But as
the little woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it!

CHAPTER XXIII

Esther's Narrative

We came home from Mr. Boythorn's after six pleasant weeks. We were
often in the park and in the woods and seldom passed the lodge
where we had taken shelter without looking in to speak to the
keeper's wife; but we saw no more of Lady Dedlock, except at church
on Sundays. There was company at Chesney Wold; and although
several beautiful faces surrounded her, her face retained the same
influence on me as at first. I do not quite know even now whether
it was painful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards her or
made me shrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of
fear, and I know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered
back, as they had done at first, to that old time of my life.

I had a fancy, on more than one of these Sundays, that what this
lady so curiously was to me, I was to her--I mean that I disturbed
her thoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way.
But when I stole a glance at her and saw her so composed and
distant and unapproachable, I felt this to be a foolish weakness.
Indeed, I felt the whole state of my mind in reference to her to be
weak and unreasonable, and I remonstrated with myself about it as
much as I could.

One incident that occurred before we quitted Mr. Boythorn's house,
I had better mention in this place.

I was walking in the garden with Ada and when I was told that some
one wished to see me. Going into the breakfast-room where this
person was waiting, I found it to be the French maid who had cast
off her shoes and walked through the wet grass on the day when it
thundered and lightened.

"Mademoiselle," she began, looking fixedly at me with her too-eager
eyes, though otherwise presenting an agreeable appearance and
speaking neither with boldness nor servility, "I have taken a great
liberty in coming here, but you know how to excuse it, being so
amiable, mademoiselle."

"No excuse is necessary," I returned, "if you wish to speak to me."

"That is my desire, mademoiselle. A thousand thanks for the
permission. I have your leave to speak. Is it not?" she said in a
quick, natural way.

"Certainly," said I.

"Mademoiselle, you are so amiable! Listen then, if you please. I
have left my Lady. We could not agree. My Lady is so high, so
very high. Pardon! Mademoiselle, you are right!"  Her quickness
anticipated what I might have said presently but as yet had only
thought. "It is not for me to come here to complain of my Lady.
But I say she is so high, so very high. I will not say a word
more. All the world knows that."

"Go on, if you please," said I.

"Assuredly; mademoiselle, I am thankful for your politeness.
Mademoiselle, I have an inexpressible desire to find service with a
young lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful. You are good,
accomplished, and beautiful as an angel. Ah, could I have the
honour of being your domestic!"

"I am sorry--" I began.

"Do not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle!" she said with an
involuntary contraction of her fine black eyebrows. "Let me hope a
moment! Mademoiselle, I know this service would be more retired
than that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know this
service would be less distinguished than that which I have quitted.
Well! I wish that, I know that I should win less, as to wages here.
Good. I am content."

"I assure you," said I, quite embarrassed by the mere idea of
having such an attendant, "that I keep no maid--"

"Ah, mademoiselle, but why not? Why not, when you can have one so
devoted to you! Who would be enchanted to serve you; who would be
so true, so zealous, and so faithful every day! Mademoiselle, I
wish with all my heart to serve you. Do not speak of money at
present. Take me as I am. For nothing!"

She was so singularly earnest that I drew back, almost afraid of
her. Without appearing to notice it, in her ardour she still
pressed herself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though
always with a certain grace and propriety.

"Mademoiselle, I come from the South country where we are quick and
where we like and dislike very strong. My Lady was too high for
me; I was too high for her. It is done--past--finlshed! Receive
me as your domestic, and I will serve you well. I will do more for
you than you figure to yourself now. Chut! Mademoiselle, I will--
no matter, I will do my utmost possible in all things. If you
accept my service, you will not repent it. Mademoiselle, you will
not repent it, and I will serve you well. You don't know how
well!"

There was a lowering energy in her face as she stood looking at me
while I explained the impossibility of my engagmg her (without
thinking it necessary to say how very little I desired to do so),
which seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets
of Paris in the reign of terror.

She heard me out without interruption and then said with her pretty
accent and in her mildest voice, "Hey, mademoiselle, I have
received my answer! I am sorry of it. But I must go elsewhere and
seek what I have not found here. Will you graciously let me kiss
your hand?"

She looked at me more intently as she took it, and seemed to take
note, with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. "I fear I
surprised you, mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?" she said
with a parting curtsy.

I confessed that she had surprised us all.

"I took an oath, mademoiselle," she said, smiling, "and I wanted to
stamp it on my mind so that I might keep it faithfully. And I
will! Adieu, mademoiselle!"

So ended our conference, which I was very glad to bring to a close.
I supposed she went away from the village, for I saw her no more;
and nothing else occurred to disturb our tranquil summer pleasures
until six weeks were out and we returned home as I began just now
by saying.

At that time, and for a good many weeks after that time, Richard
was constant in his visits. Besides coming every Saturday or
Sunday and remaining with us until Monday morning, he sometimes
rode out on horseback unexpectedly and passed the evening with us
and rode back again early next day. He was as vivacious as ever
and told us he was very industrious, but I was not easy in my mind
about him. It appeared to me that his industry was all
misdirected. I could not find that it led to anything but the
formation of delusive hopes in connexion with the suit already the
pernicious cause of so much sorrow and ruin. He had got at the
core of that mystery now, he told us, and nothing could be plainer
than that the will under which he and Ada were to take I don't know
how many thousands of pounds must be finally established if there
were any sense or justice in the Court of Chancery--but oh, what a
great IF that sounded in my ears--and that this happy conclusion
could not be much longer delayed. He proved this to himself by all
the weary arguments on that side he had read, and every one of them
sunk him deeper in the infatuation. He had even begun to haunt the
court. He told us how he saw Miss Flite there daily, how they
talked together, and how he did her little kindnesses, and how,
while he laughed at her, he pitied her from his heart. But he
never thought--never, my poor, dear, sanguine Richard, capable of
so much happiness then, and with such better things before him--
what a fatal link was riveting between his fresh youth and her
faded age, between his free hopes and her caged birds, and her
hungry garret, and her wandering mind.

Ada loved him too well to mistrust him much in anything he said or
did, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of the east
wind and read more than usual in the growlery, preserved a strict
silence on the subject. So I thought one day when I went to London
to meet Caddy Jellyby, at her solicitation, I would ask Richard to
be in waiting for me at the coach-office, that we might have a
little talk together. I found him there when I arrived, and we
walked away arm in arm.

"Well, Richard," said I as soon as I could begin to be grave with
him, "are you beginning to feel more settled now?"

"Oh, yes, my dear!" returned Richard. "I'm all right enough."

"But settled?" said I.

"How do you mean, settled?" returned Richard with his gay laugh.

"Settled in the law," said I.

"Oh, aye," replied Richard, "I'm all right enough."

"You said that before, my dear Richard."

"And you don't think it's an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it's not.
Settled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?"

"Yes."

"Why, no, I can't say I am settling down," said Richard, strongly
emphasizing "down," as if that expressed the difficulty, "because
one can't settle down while this business remains in such an
unsettled state. When I say this business, of course I mean the--
forbidden subject."

"Do you think it will ever be in a settled state?" said I.

"Not the least doubt of it," answered Richard.

We walked a little way without speaking, and presently Richard
addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus: "My
dear Esther, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more
constant sort of fellow. I don't mean constant to Ada, for I love
her dearly--better and better every day--but constant to myself.
(Somehow, I mean something that I can't very well express, but
you'll make it out.)  If I were a more constant sort of fellow, I
should have held on either to Badger or to Kenge and Carboy like
grim death, and should have begun to be steady and systematic by
this time, and shouldn't be in debt, and--"

"ARE you in debt, Richard?"

"Yes," said Richard, "I am a little so, my dear. Also, I have
taken rather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. Now the
murder's out; you despise me, Esther, don't you?"

"You know I don't," said I.

"You are kinder to me than I often am to myself," he returned. "My
dear Esther, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled,
but how CAN I be more settled? If you lived in an unfinished
house, you couldn't settle down in it; if you were condemned to
leave everything you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard
to apply yourself to anything; and yet that's my unhappy case. I
was born into this unfinished contention with all its chances and
changes, and it began to unsettle me before I quite knew the
difference between a suit at law and a suit of clothes; and it has
gone on unsettling me ever since; and here I am now, conscious
sometimes that I am but a worthless fellow to love my confiding
cousin Ada."

We were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes
and sobbed as he said the words.

"Oh, Richard!" said I. "Do not be so moved. You have a noble
nature, and Ada's love may make you worthier every day."

"I know, my dear," he replied, pressing my arm, "I know all that.
You mustn't mind my being a little soft now, for I have had all
this upon my mind for a long time, and have often meant to speak to
you, and have sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes courage.
I know what the thought of Ada ought to do for me, but it doesn't
do it. I am too unsettled even for that. I love her most
devotedly, and yet I do her wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day
and hour. But it can't last for ever. We shall come on for a
final hearing and get judgment in our favour, and then you and Ada
shall see what I can really be!"

It had given me a pang to hear him sob and see the tears start out
between his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting to me
than the hopeful animation with which he said these words.

"I have looked well into the papers, Esther. I have been deep in
them for months," he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a
moment, "and you may rely upon it that we shall come out
triumphant. As to years of delay, there has been no want of them,
heaven knows! And there is the greater probability of our bringing
the matter to a speedy close; in fact, it's on the paper now. It
will be all right at last, and then you shall see!"

Recalling how he had just now placed Messrs. Kenge and Carboy in
the same category with Mr. Badger, I asked him when he intended to
be articled in Lincoln's Inn.

"There again! I think not at all, Esther," he returned with an
effort. "I fancy I have had enough of it. Having worked at
Jarndyce and Jarndyce like a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst
for the law and satisfied myself that I shouldn't like it.
Besides, I find it unsettles me more and more to be so constantly
upon the scene of action. So what," continued Richard, confident
again by this time, "do I naturally turn my thoughts to?"

"I can't imagine," said I.

"Don't look so serious," returned Richard, "because it's the best
thing I can do, my dear Esther, I am certain. It's not as if I
wanted a profession for life. These proceedings will come to a
termination, and then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a
pursuit which is in its nature more or less unsettled, and
therefore suited to my temporary condition--I may say, precisely
suited. What is it that I naturally turn my thoughts to?"

I looked at him and shook my head.

"What," said Richard, in a tone of perfect conviction, "but the
army!"

"The army?" said I.

"The army, of course. What I have to do is to get a commission;
and--there I am, you know!" said Richard.

And then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his
pocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two hundred
pounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he
contracted no debt at all within a corresponding period in the
army--as to which he had quite made up his mind; this step must
involve a saving of four hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand
pounds in five years, which was a considerable sum. And then he
spoke so ingenuously and sincerely of the sacrifice he made in
withdrawing himself for a time from Ada, and of the earnestness
with which he aspired--as in thought he always did, I know full
well--to repay her love, and to ensure her happiness, and to
conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire the very soul of
decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely. For, I
thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon and
so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal blight
that ruined everything it rested on!

I spoke to Richard with all the earnestness I felt, and all the
hope I could not quite feel then, and implored him for Ada's sake
not to put any trust in Chancery. To all I said, Richard readily
assented, riding over the court and everything else in his easy way
and drawing the brightest pictures of the character he was to
settle into--alas, when the grievous suit should loose its hold
upon him! We had a long talk, but it always came back to that, in
substance.

At last we came to Soho Square, where Caddy Jellyby had appointed
to wait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of Newman
Street. Caddy was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as
soon as I appeared. After a few cheerful words, Richard left us
together.

"Prince has a pupil over the way, Esther," said Caddy, "and got the
key for us. So if you will walk round and round here with me, we
can lock ourselves in and I can tell you comfortably what I wanted
to see your dear good face about."

"Very well, my dear," said I. "Nothing could be better."  So
Caddy, after affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she
called it, locked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk
round the garden very cosily.

"You see, Esther," said Caddy, who thoroughly enjoyed a little
confidence, "after you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry
without Ma's knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the dark
respecting our engagement--though I don't believe Ma cares much for
me, I must say--I thought it right to mention your opinions to
Prince. In the first place because I want to profit by everything
you tell me, and in the second place because I have no secrets from
Prince."

"I hope he approved, Caddy?"

"Oh, my dear! I assure you he would approve of anything you could
say. You have no idea what an opimon he has of you!"

"Indeed!"

"Esther, it's enough to make anybody but me jealous," said Caddy,
laughing and shaking her head; "but it only makes me joyful, for
you are the first friend I ever had, and the best friend I ever can
have, and nobody can respect and love you too much to please me."

"Upon my word, Caddy," said I, "you are in the general conspiracy
to keep me in a good humour. Well, my dear?"

"Well! I am going to tell you," replied Caddy, crossing her hands
confidentially upon my arm. "So we talked a good deal about it,
and so I said to Prince, 'Prince, as Miss Summerson--"

"I hope you didn't say 'Miss Summerson'?"

"No. I didn't!" cried Caddy, greatly pleased and with the
brightest of faces. "I said, 'Esther.'  I said to Prince, 'As
Esther is decidedly of that opinion, Prince, and has expressed it
to me, and always hints it when she writes those kind notes, which
you are so fond of hearing me read to you, I am prepared to
disclose the truth to Ma whenever you think proper. And I think,
Prince,' said I, 'that Esther thinks that I should be in a better,
and truer, and more honourable position altogether if you did the
same to your papa.'"

"Yes, my dear," said I. "Esther certainly does think so."

"So I was right, you see!" exclaimed Caddy. "Well! This troubled
Prince a good deal, not because he had the least doubt about it,
but because he is so considerate of the feelings of old Mr.
Turveydrop; and he had his apprehensions that old Mr. Turveydrop
might break his heart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in
some affecting manner or other if he made such an announcement. He
feared old Mr. Turveydrop might consider it undutiful and might
receive too great a shock. For old Mr. Turveydrop's deportment is
very beautiful, you know, Esther," said Caddy, "and his feelings
are extremely sensitive."

"Are they, my dear?"

"Oh, extremely sensitive. Prince says so. Now, this has caused my
darling child--I didn't mean to use the expression to you, Esther,"
Caddy apologized, her face suffused with blushes, "but I generally
call Prince my darling child."

I laughed; and Caddy laughed and blushed, and went on'

"This has caused him, Esther--"

"Caused whom, my dear?"

"Oh, you tiresome thing!" said Caddy, laughing, with her pretty
face on fire. "My darling child, if you insist upon it! This has
caused him weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, from day to
day, in a very anxious manner. At last he said to me, 'Caddy, if
Miss Summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be
prevailed upon to be present when I broke the subject, I think I
could do it.'  So I promised I would ask you. And I made up my
mind, besides," said Caddy, looking at me hopefully but timidly,
"that if you consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me
to Ma. This is what I meant when I said in my note that I had a
great favour and a great assistance to beg of you. And if you
thought you could grant it, Esther, we should both be very
grateful."

"Let me see, Caddy," said I, pretending to consider. "Really, I
think I could do a greater thing than that if the need were
pressing. I am at your service and the darling child's, my dear,
whenever you like."

Caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine, being, I
believe, as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as
any tender heart that ever beat in this world; and after another
turn or two round the garden, during which she put on an entirely
new pair of gloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that
she might do no avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we
went to Newman Street direct.

Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not
very hopeful pupil--a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a
deep voice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama--whose case was
certainly not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we
threw her preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after
proceeding as discordantly as possible; and when the little girl
had changed her shoes and had had her white muslin extinguished in
shawls, she was taken away. After a few words of preparation, we
then went in search of Mr. Turveydrop, whom we found, grouped with
his hat and gloves, as a model of deportment, on the sofa in his
private apartment--the only comfortable room in the house. He
appeared to have dressed at his leisure in the intervals of a light
collation, and his dressing-case, brushes, and so forth, all of
quite an elegant kind, lay about.

"Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby."

"Charmed! Enchanted!" said Mr. Turveydrop, rising with his high-
shouldered bow. "Permit me!"  Handing chairs. "Be seated!"  
Kissing the tips of his left fingers. "Overjoyed!"  Shutting his
eyes and rolling. "My little retreat is made a paradise."  
Recomposing himself on the sofa like the second gentleman in
Europe.

"Again you find us, Miss Summerson," said he, "using our little
arts to polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us and rewards us
by the condescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these
times (and we have made an awfully degenerating business of it
since the days of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent--my patron,
if I may presume to say so) to experience that deportment is not
wholly trodden under foot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in
the smile of beauty, my dear madam."

I said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a
pinch of snuff.

"My dear son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "you have four schools this
afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich."

"Thank you, father," returned Prince, "I will be sure to be
punctual. My dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for
what I am going to say?"

"Good heaven!" exclaimed the model, pale and aghast as Prince and
Caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. "What is this? Is this
lunacy! Or what is this?"

"Father," returned Prince with great submission, "I love this young
lady, and we are engaged."

"Engaged!" cried Mr. Turveydrop, reclining on the sofa and shutting
out the sight with his hand. "An arrow launched at my brain by my
own child!"

"We have been engaged for some time, father," faltered Prince, "and
Miss Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the
fact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the present
occasion. Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you,
father."

Mr. Turveydrop uttered a groan.

"No, pray don't! Pray don't, father," urged his son. "Miss
Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, and our first
desire is to consider your comfort."

Mr. Turveydrop sobbed.

"No, pray don't, father!" cried his son.

"Boy," said Mr. Turveydrop, "it is well that your sainted mother is
spared this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir,
strike home!"

"Pray don't say so, father," implored Prince, in tears. "It goes
to my heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and
intention is to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not
forget our duty--what is my duty is Caroline's, as we have often
said together--and with your approval and consent, father, we will
devote ourselves to making your life agreeable."

"Strike home," murmured Mr. Turveydrop. "Strike home!"  But he
seemed to listen, I thought, too.

"My dear father," returned Prince, "we well know what little
comforts you are accustomed to and have a right to, and it will
always be our study and our pride to provide those before anything.
If you will bless us with your approval and consent, father, we
shall not think of being married until it is quite agreeable to
you; and when we ARE married, we shall always make you--of course--
our first consideration. You must ever be the head and master
here, father; and we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if
we failed to know it or if we failed to exert ourselves in every
possible way to please you."

Mr. Turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle and came
upright on the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff
cravat, a perfect model of parental deportment.

"My son!" said Mr. Turveydrop. "My children! I cannot resist your
prayer. Be happy!"

His benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched
out his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect
and gratitude) was the most confusing sight I ever saw.

"My children," said Mr. Turveydrop, paternally encircling Caddy
with his left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand
gracefully on his hip. "My son and daughter, your happiness shall
be my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with
me"--meaning, of course, I will always live with you--"this house
is henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May
you long live to share it with me!"

The power of his deportment was such that they really were as much
overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself
upon them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent
sacrifice in their favour.

"For myself, my children," said Mr. Turveydrop, "I am falling into
the sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the
last feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment may linger in this
weaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to
society and will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are
few and simple. My little apartment here, my few essentials for
the toilet, my frugal morning meal, and my little dinner will
suffice. I charge your dutiful affection with the supply of these
requirements, and I charge myself with all the rest."

They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity.

"My son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "for those little points in which
you are deficient--points of deportment, which are born with a man,
which may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated--
you may still rely on me. I have been faithful to my post since
the days of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I will not
desert it now. No, my son. If you have ever contemplated your
father's poor position with a feeling of pride, you may rest
assured that he will do nothing to tarnish it. For yourself,
Prince, whose character is different (we cannot be all alike, nor
is it advisable that we should), work, be industrious, earn money,
and extend the connexion as much as possible."

"That you may depend I will do, dear father, with all my heart,"
replied Prince.

"I have no doubt of it," said Mr. Turveydrop. "Your qualities are
not shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to
both of you, my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of
a sainted wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting, I
believe, SOME ray of light, take care of the establishment, take
care of my simple wants, and bless you both!"

Old Mr. Turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the
occasion, that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn at
once if we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure
after a very loving farewell between Caddy and her betrothed, and
during our walk she was so happy and so full of old Mr.
Turveydrop's praises that I would not have said a word in his
disparagement for any consideration.

The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows annoucing that it
was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than
ever. The name of poor Mr. Jellyby had appeared in the list of
bankrupts but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the
dining-room with two gentlemen and a heap of blue bags, account-
books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to
understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his
comprehension, for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by
mistake and we came upon Mr. Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly
fenced into a corner by the great dining-table and the two
gentlemen, he seemed to have given up the whole thing and to be
speechless and insensible.

Going upstairs to Mrs. Jellyby's room (the children were all
screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we
found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence,
opening, reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of
torn covers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she
did not know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious,
bright-eyed, far-off look of hers.

"Ah! Miss Summerson!" she said at last. "I was thinking of
something so different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see
you. Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?"

I hoped in return that Mr. Jellyby was quite well.

"Why, not quite, my dear," said Mrs. Jellyby in the calmest manner.
"He has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of
spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time
to think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and
seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each,
either gone or going to the left bank of the Niger."

I thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor
going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be
so placid.

"You have brought Caddy back, I see," observed Mrs. Jellyby with a
glance at her daughter. "It has become quite a novelty to see her
here. She has almost deserted her old employment and in fact
obliges me to employ a boy."

"I am sure, Ma--" began Caddy.

"Now you know, Caddy," her mother mildly interposed, "that I DO
employ a boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your
contradicting?"

"I was not going to contradict, Ma," returned Caddy. "I was only
going to say that surely you wouldn't have me be a mere drudge all
my life."

"I believe, my dear," said Mrs. Jellyby, still opening her letters,
casting her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as
she spoke, "that you have a business example before you in your
mother. Besides. A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy with the
destinies of the human race, it would raise you high above any such
idea. But you have none. I have often told you, Caddy, you have
no such sympathy."

"Not if it's Africa, Ma, I have not."

"Of course you have not. Now, if I were not happily so much
engaged, Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby, sweetly casting her
eyes for a moment on me and considering where to put the particular
letter she had just opened, "this would distress and disappoint me.
But I have so much to think of, in connexion with Borrioboola-Gha
and it is so necessary I should concentrate myself that there is my
remedy, you see."

As Caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as Mrs. Jellyby was
looking far away into Africa straight through my bonnet and head, I
thought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit
and to attract Mrs. Jellyby's attention.

"Perhaps," I began, "you will wonder what has brought me here to
interrupt you."

"I am always delighted to see Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby,
pursuing her employment with a placid smile. "Though I wish," and
she shook her head, "she was more interested in the Borrioboolan
project."

"I have come with Caddy," said I, "because Caddy justly thinks she
ought not to have a secret from her mother and fancies I shall
encourage and aid her (though I am sure I don't know how) in
imparting one."

"Caddy," said Mrs. Jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation
and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, "you are
going to tell me some nonsense."

Caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and
letting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily,
said, "Ma, I am engaged."

"Oh, you ridiculous child!" observed Mrs. Jellyby with an
abstracted air as she looked over the dispatch last opened; "what a
goose you are!"

"I am engaged, Ma," sobbed Caddy, "to young Mr. Turveydrop, at the
academy; and old Mr. Turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man
indeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you'll give us
yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never,
never could!" sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful of her general
complainings and of everything but her natural affection.

"You see again, Miss Summerson," observed Mrs. Jellyby serenely,
"what a happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am and to have
this necessity for self-concentration that I have. Here is Caddy
engaged to a dancing-master's son--mixed up with people who have no
more sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has
herself! This, too, when Mr. Quale, one of the first
philanthropists of our time, has mentioned to me that he was really
disposed to be interested in her!"

"Ma, I always hated and detested Mr. Quale!" sobbed Caddy.

"Caddy, Caddy!" returned Mrs. Jellyby, opening another letter with
the greatest complacency. "I have no doubt you did. How could you
do otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which
he overflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite child
to me, if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale,
these petty details might grieve me very much, Miss Summerson. But
can I permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy
(from whom I expect nothing else) to interpose between me and the
great African continent? No. No," repeated Mrs. Jellyby in a calm
clear voice, and with an agreeable smile, as she opened more
letters and sorted them. "No, indeed."

I was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception,
though I might have expected it, that I did not know what to say.
Caddy seemed equally at a loss. Mrs. Jellyby continued to open and
sort letters and to repeat occasionally in quite a charming tone of
voice and with a smile of perfect composure, "No, indeed."

"I hope, Ma," sobbed poor Caddy at last, "you are not angry?"

"Oh, Caddy, you really are an absurd girl," returned Mrs. Jellyby,
"to ask such questions after what I have said of the preoccupation
of my mind."

"And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent and wish us well?" said
Caddy.

"You are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind,"
said Mrs. Jellyby; "and a degenerate child, when you might have
devoted yourself to the great public measure. But the step is
taken, and I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said.
Now, pray, Caddy," said Mrs. Jellyby, for Caddy was kissing her,
"don't delay me in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch
of papers before the afternoon post comes in!"

I thought I could not do better than take my leave; I was detained
for a moment by Caddy's saying, "You won't object to my bringing
him to see you, Ma?"

"Oh, dear me, Caddy," cried Mrs. Jellyby, who had relapsed into
that distant contemplation, "have you begun again? Bring whom?"

"Him, Ma."

"Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs. Jellyby, quite weary of such little
matters. "Then you must bring him some evening which is not a
Parent Society night, or a Branch night, or a Ramification night.
You must accommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. My
dear Miss Summerson, it was very kind of you to come here to help
out this silly chit. Good-bye! When I tell you that I have fifty-
eight new letters from manufacturing families anxious to understand
the details of the native and coffee-cultivation question this
morning, I need not apologize for having very little leisure."

I was not surprised by Caddy's being in low spirits when we went
downstairs, or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying
she would far rather have been scolded than treated with such
indifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in
clothes that how she was ever to be married creditably she didn't
know. I gradually cheered her up by dwelling on the many things
she would do for her unfortunate father and for Peepy when she had
a home of her own; and finally we went downstairs into the damp
dark kitchen, where Peepy and his little brothers and sisters were
grovelling on the stone floor and where we had such a game of play
with them that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I
was obliged to fall back on my fairy-tales. From time to time I
heard loud voices in the parlour overhead, and occasionally a
violent tumbling about of the furniture. The last effect I am
afraid was caused by poor Mr. Jellyby's breaking away from the
dining-table and making rushes at the window with the intention of
throwing himself into the area whenever he made any new attempt to
understand his affairs.

As I rode quietly home at night after the day's bustle, I thought a
good deal of Caddy's engagement and felt confirmed in my hopes (in
spite of the elder Mr. Turveydrop) that she would be the happier
and better for it. And if there seemed to be but a slender chance
of her and her husband ever finding out what the model of
deportment really was, why that was all for the best too, and who
would wish them to be wiser? I did not wish them to be any wiser
and indeed was half ashamed of not entirely believing in him
myself. And I looked up at the stars, and thought about travellers
in distant countries and the stars THEY saw, and hoped I might
always be so blest and happy as to be useful to some one in my
small way.

They were so glad to see me when I got home, as they always were,
that I could have sat down and cried for joy if that had not been a
method of making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from
the lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome,
and spoke so cheerily, and was so happy to do anything for me, that
I suppose there never was such a fortunate little creature in the
world.

We got into such a chatty state that night, through Ada and my
guardian drawing me out to tell them all about Caddy, that I went
on prose, prose, prosing for a length of time. At last I got up to
my own room, quite red to think how I had been holding forth, and
then I heard a soft tap at my door. So I said, "Come in!" and
there came in a pretty little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who
dropped a curtsy.

"If you please, miss," said the little girl in a soft voice, "I am
Charley."

"Why, so you are," said I, stooping down in astonishment and giving
her a kiss. "How glad am I to see you, Charley!"

"If you please, miss," pursued Charley in the same soft voice, "I'm
your maid."

"Charley?"

"If you please, miss, I'm a present to you, with Mr. Jarndyce's
love."

I sat down with my hand on Charley's neck and looked at Charley.

"And oh, miss," says Charley, clapping her hands, with the tears
starting down her dimpled cheeks, "Tom's at school, if you please,
and learning so good! And little Emma, she's with Mrs. Blinder,
miss, a-being took such care of! And Tom, he would have been at
school--and Emma, she would have been left with Mrs. Blinder--and
me, I should have been here--all a deal sooner, miss; only Mr.
Jarndyce thought that Tom and Emma and me had better get a little
used to parting first, we was so small. Don't cry, if you please,
miss!"

"I can't help it, Charley."

"No, miss, nor I can't help it," says Charley. "And if you please,
miss, Mr. Jarndyce's love, and he thinks you'll like to teach me
now and then. And if you please, Tom and Emma and me is to see
each other once a month. And I'm so happy and so thankful, miss,"
cried Charley with a heaving heart, "and I'll try to be such a good
maid!"

"Oh, Charley dear, never forget who did all this!"

"No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won't. Nor yet Emma. It was all
you, miss."

"I have known nothing of it. It was Mr. Jarndyce, Charley."

"Yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you and that you
might be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little present
with his love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom
was to be sure to remember it."

Charley dried her eyes and entered on her functions, going in her
matronly little way about and about the room and folding up
everything she could lay her hands upon. Presently Charley came
creeping back to my side and said, "Oh, don't cry, if you please,
miss."

And I said again, "I can't help it, Charley."

And Charley said again, "No, miss, nor I can't help it."  And so,
after all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she.

CHAPTER XXIV

An Appeal Case

As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have
given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr.
Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise
when he received the representation, though it caused him much
uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted
together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole
days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge,
and laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While
they were thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent
considerable inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed
his head so constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested
in its right place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other
time, but maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our
utmost endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping
assurances that everything was going on capitally and that it
really was all right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by
him.

We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was
made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard's behalf as an infant and a
ward, and I don't know what, and that there was a quantity of
talking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court
as a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was
adjourned and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and
petitioned about until Richard began to doubt (as he told us)
whether, if he entered the army at all, it would not be as a
veteran of seventy or eighty years of age. At last an appointment
was made for him to see the Lord Chancellor again in his private
room, and there the Lord Chancellor very seriously reproved him for
trifling with time and not knowing his mind--"a pretty good joke, I
think," said Richard, "from that quarter!"--and at last it was
settled that his application should be granted. His name was
entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for an ensign's
commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an agent's; and
Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a violent
course of military study and got up at five o'clock every morning
to practise the broadsword exercise.

Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We
sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper or
out of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be
spoken to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now
in a professor's house in London, was able to be with us less
frequently than before; my guardian still maintained the same
reserve; and so time passed until the commission was obtained and
Richard received directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland.

He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a
long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed
before my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were
sitting and said, "Come in, my dears!"  We went in and found
Richard, whom we had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the
chimney-piece looking mortified and angry.

"Rick and I, Ada," said Mr. Jarndyce, "are not quite of one mind.
Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!"

"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "The harder
because you have been so considerate to me in all other respects
and have done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never
could have been set right without you, sir."

"Well, well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "I want to set you more right
yet. I want to set you more right with yourself."

"I hope you will excuse my saying, sir," returned Richard in a
fiery way, but yet respectfully, "that I think I am the best judge
about myself."

"I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick," observed Mr.
Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, "that's
it's quite natural in you to think so, but I don't think so. I
must do my duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool
blood; and I hope you will always care for me, cool and hot."

Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-
chair and sat beside her.

"It's nothing, my dear," he said, "it's nothing. Rick and I have
only had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you
are the theme. Now you are afraid of what's coming."

"I am not indeed, cousin John," replied Ada with a smile, "if it is
to come from you."

"Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute's calm attention,
without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My
dear girl," putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the
easy-chair, "you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little
woman told me of a little love affair?"

"It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your
kindness that day, cousin John."

"I can never forget it," said Richard.

"And I can never forget it," said Ada.

"So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for
us to agree," returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the
gentleness and honour of his heart. "Ada, my bird, you should know
that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All
that he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully
equipped. He has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward
to the tree he has planted."

"Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am
quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir," said
Richard, "is not all I have."

"Rick, Rick!" cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner,
and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would
have stopped his ears. "For the love of God, don't found a hope or
expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the
grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom
that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to
beg, better to die!"

We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit
his lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and
knew that I felt too, how much he needed it.

"Ada, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness,
"these are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and
have seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had to start
him in the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you,
for his sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the
understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I
must go further. 1 will be plain with you both. You were to
confide freely in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you
wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but your
relationship."

"Better to say at once, sir," returned Richard, "that you renounce
all confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same."

"Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don't mean it."

"You think I have begun ill, sir," retorted Richard. "I HAVE, I
know."

"How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we
spoke of these things last," said Mr. Jarndyce in a cordial and
encouraging manner. "You have not made that beginning yet, but
there is a time for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather,
it is just now fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You
two (very young, my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing
more. What more may come must come of being worked out, Rick, and
no sooner."

"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "Harder than I
could have supposed you would be."

"My dear boy," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am harder with myself when I
do anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own
hands. Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that
there should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is
better for her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you
will do what is best for the other, if not what is best for
yourselves."

"Why is it best, sir?" returned Richard hastily. "It was not when
we opened our hearts to you. You did not say so then."

"I have had experience since. I don't blame you, Rick, but I have
had experience since."

"You mean of me, sir."

"Well! Yes, of both of you," said Mr. Jarndyce kindly. "The time
is not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not
right, and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins,
begin afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for
you to write your lives in."

Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing.

"I have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Esther,"
said Mr. Jarndyce, "until now, in order that we might be open as
the day, and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I
now most earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here.
Leave all else to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do
otherwise, you will do wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in
ever bringing you together."

A long silence succeeded.

"Cousin Richard," said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to
his face, "after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice
is left us. Your mind may he quite at ease about me, for you will
leave me here under his care and will be sure that I can have
nothing to wish for--quite sure if I guide myself by his advice.
I--I don't doubt, cousin Richard," said Ada, a little confused,
"that you are very fond of me, and I--I don't think you will fall
in love with anybody else. But I should like you to consider well
about it too, as I should like you to be in all things very happy.
You may trust in me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable;
but I am not unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even
cousins may be sorry to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry,
Richard, though I know it's for your welfare. I shall always think
of you affectionately, and often talk of you with Esther, and--and
perhaps you will sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard.
So now," said Ada, going up to him and giving him her trembling
hand, "we are only cousins again, Richard--for the time perhaps--
and I pray for a blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!"

It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my
guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he
himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But
it was certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from
this hour he never was as free and open with Mr. Jarndyce as he had
been before. He had every reason given him to be so, but he was
not; and solely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between
them.

In the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself,
and even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in
Hertfordshire while he, Mr. Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a
week. He remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of
tears, and at such times would confide to me the heaviest self-
reproaches. But in a few minutes he would recklessly conjure up
some undefinable means by which they were both to be made rich and
happy for ever, and would become as gay as possible.

It was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long,
buying a variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the
things he would have bought if he had been left to his own ways I
say nothing. He was perfectly confidential with me, and often
talked so sensibly and feelingly about his faults and his vigorous
resolutions, and dwelt so much upon the encouragement he derived
from these conversations that I could never have been tired if I
had tried.

There used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our
lodging to fence with Richard a person who had formerly been a
cavalry soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free
bearing, with whom Richard had practised for some months. I heard
so much about him, not only from Richard, but from my guardian too,
that I was purposely in the room with my work one morning after
breakfast when he came.

"Good morning, Mr. George," said my guardian, who happened to be
alone with me. "Mr. Carstone will be here directly. Meanwhile,
Miss Summerson is very happy to see you, I know. Sit down."

He sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought, and
without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and
across his upper lip.

"You are as punctual as the sun," said Mr. Jarndyce.

"Military time, sir," he replied. "Force of habit. A mere habit
in me, sir. I am not at all business-like."

"Yet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?" said Mr.
Jarndyce.

"Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much
of a one."

"And what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make
of Mr. Carstone?" said my guardian.

"Pretty good, sir," he replied, folding his arms upon his broad
chest and looking very large. "If Mr. Carstone was to give his
full mind to it, he would come out very good."

"But he don't, I suppose?" said my guardian.

"He did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind.
Perhaps he has something else upon it--some young lady, perhaps."  
His bright dark eyes glanced at me for the first time.

"He has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr. George," said I,
laughing, "though you seem to suspect me."

He reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper's bow.
"No offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs."

"Not at all," said I. "I take it as a compliment."

If he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or
four quick successive glances. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said
to my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, "but you did me the
honour to mention the young lady's name--"

"Miss Summerson."

"Miss Summerson," he repeated, and looked at me again.

"Do you know the name?" I asked.

"No, miss. To my knowledge I never heard it. I thought I had seen
you somewhere."

"I think not," I returned, raising my head from my work to look at
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 resuIt. 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
doubt if I should have known how to get on with that lady."  And he
put one hand in his breast and stood upright in a martial attitude
as I informed little Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purport of his
kind errand.

"My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!"
she exclaimed. "Now really! My dear, I will wait upon him with
the greatest pleasure."

"He is living concealed at Mr. George's," said I. "Hush! This is
Mr. George."

"In--deed!" returned Miss Flite. "Very proud to have the honour!
A military man, my dear. You know, a perfect general!" she
whispered to me.

Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as
a mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often
that it was no easy matter to get her out of the court. When this
was at last done, and addressing Mr. George as "General," she gave
him her arm, to the great entertainment of some idlers who were
looking on, he was so discomposed and begged me so respectfully
"not to desert him" that I could not make up my mind to do it,
especially as Miss Flite was always tractable with me and as she
too said, "Fitz Jarndyce, my dear, you will accompany us, of
course."  As Richard seemed quite willing, and even anxious, that
we should see them safely to their destination, we agreed to do so.
And as Mr. George informed us that Gridley's mind had run on Mr.
Jarndyce all the afternoon after hearing of their interview in the
morning, I wrote a hasty note in pencil to my guardian to say where
we were gone and why. Mr. George sealed it at a coffee-house, that
it might lead to no discovery, and we sent it off by a ticket-
porter.

We then took a hackney-coach and drove away to the neighbourhood of
Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which
Mr. George apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the
door of which was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by
a chain to the door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with
grey hair, wearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and
gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-beaded
cane, addressed him.

"I ask your pardon, my good friend," said he, "but is this George's
Shooting Gallery?"

"It is, sir," returned Mr. George, glancing up at the great letters
in which that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall.

"Oh! To be sure!" said the old gentleman, following his eyes.
"Thank you. Have you rung the bell?"

"My name is George, sir, and I have rung the bell."

"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Your name is George? Then
I am here as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?"

"No, sir. You have the advantage of me."

"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Then it was your young man
who came for me. I am a physician and was requested--five minutes
ago--to come and visit a sick man at George's Shooting Gallery."

"The muffled drums," said Mr. George, turning to Richard and me and
gravely shaking his head. "It's quite correct, sir. Will you
please to walk in."

The door being at that moment opened by a very singular-looking
little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and hands and
dress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage
into a large building with bare brick walls where there were
targets, and guns, and swords, and other things of that kind. When
we had all arrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his
hat, appeared to vanish by magic and to leave another and quite a
different man in his place.

"Now lookee here, George," said the man, turning quickly round upon
him and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. "You
know me, and I know you. You're a man of the world, and I'm a man
of the world. My name's Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a
peace-warrant against Gridley. You have kept him out of the way a
long time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit."

Mr. George, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head.

"Now, George," said the other, keeping close to him, "you're a
sensible man and a well-conducted man; that's what YOU are, beyond
a doubt. And mind you, I don't talk to you as a common character,
because you have served your country and you know that when duty
calls we must obey. Consequently you're very far from wanting to
give trouble. If I required assistance, you'd assist me; that's
what YOU'D do. Phil Squod, don't you go a-sidling round the
gallery like that"--the dirty little man was shuffling about with
his shoulder against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a
manner that looked threatening--"because I know you and won't have
it."

"Phil!" said Mr. George.

"Yes, guv'ner."

"Be quiet."

The little man, with a low growl, stood still.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Bucket, "you'll excuse anything
that may appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name's Inspector
Bucket of the Detective, and I have a duty to perform. George, I
know where my man is because I was on the roof last night and saw
him through the skylight, and you along with him. He is in there,
you know," pointing; "that's where HE is--on a sofy. Now I must
see my man, and I must tell my man to consider himself in custody;
but you know me, and you know I don't want to take any
uncomfortable measures. You give me your word, as from one man to
another (and an old soldier, mind you, likewise), that it's
honourable between us two, and I'll accommodate you to the utmost
of my power."

"I give it," was the reply. '"But it wasn't handsome in you, Mr.
Bucket."

"Gammon, George! Not handsome?" said Mr. Bucket, tapping him on
his broad breast again and shaking hands with him. "I don't say it
wasn't handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally
good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life
Guardsman! Why, he's a model of the whole British army in himself,
ladies and gentlemen. I'd give a fifty-pun' note to be such a
figure of a man!"

The affair being brought to this head, Mr. George, after a little
consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called
him), taking Miss Flite with him. Mr. Bucket agreeing, they went
away to the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and
standing by a table covered with guns. Mr. Bucket took this
opportunity of entering into a little light conversation, asking me
if I were afraid of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking
Richard if he were a good shot; asking Phil Squod which he
considered the best of those rifles and what it might be worth
first-hand, telling him in return that it was a pity he ever gave
way to his temper, for he was naturally so amiable that he might
have been a young woman, and making himself generally agreeable.

After a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and
Richard and I were going quietly away when Mr. George came after
us. He said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he
would take a visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly
passed his lips when the bell was rung and my guardian appeared,
"on the chance," he slightly observed, "of being able to do any
little thing for a poor fellow involved in the same misfortune as
himself."  We all four went back together and went into the place
where Gridley was.

It was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted
wood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high
and only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high
gallery roof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr.
Bucket had looked down. The sun was low--near setting--and its
light came redly in above, without descending to the ground. Upon
a plain canvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire, dressed
much as we had seen him last, but so changed that at first I
recognized no likeness in his colourless face to what I
recollected.

He had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling
on his grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were
covered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of
such tokens. Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the
little mad woman were side by side and, as it were, alone. She sat
on a chair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them.

His voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his
strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that
had at last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of
form and colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from
Shropshire whom we had spoken with before.

He inclined his head to Richard and me and spoke to my guardian.

"Mr. Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not
long to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir.
You are a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour
you."

They shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of
comfort to him.

"It may seem strange to you, sir," returned Gridley; "I should not
have liked to see you if this had been the flrst time of our
meeting. But you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up
with my single hand against them all, you know I told them the
truth to the last, and told them what they were, and what they had
done to me; so I don't mind your seeing me, this wreck."

"You have been courageous with them many and many a time," returned
my guardian.

"Sir, I have been," with a faint smile. "I told you what would
come of it when I ceased to be so, and see here! Look at us--look
at us!"  He drew the hand Miss Flite held through her arm and
brought her something nearer to him.

"This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits
and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul
alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of
many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever
had on earth that Chancery has not broken."

"Accept my blessing, Gridley," said Miss Flite in tears. "Accept
my blessing!"

"I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr.
Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that
I could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were
until I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long
I have been wearing out, I don't know; I seemed to break down in an
hour. I hope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody
here will lead them to believe that I died defying them,
consistently and perseveringly, as I did through so many years."

Here Mr. Bucket, who was sitting in a corner by the door, good-
naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer.

"Come, come!" he said from his corner. "Don't go on in that way,
Mr. Gridley. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little
low sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You'll lose your temper
with the whole round of 'em, again and again; and I shall take you
on a score of warrants yet, if I have luck."

He only shook his head.

"Don't shake your head," said Mr. Bucket. "Nod it; that's what I
want to see you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have
had together! Haven't I seen you in the Fleet over and over again
for contempt? Haven't I come into court, twenty afternoons for no
other purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog?
Don't you remember when you first began to threaten the lawyers,
and the peace was sworn against you two or three times a week? Ask
the little old lady there; she has been always present. Hold up,
Mr. Gridley, hold up, sir!"

"What are you going to do about him?" asked George in a low voice.

"I don't know yet," said Bucket in the same tone. Then resuming
his encouragement, he pursued aloud: "Worn out, Mr. Gridley? After
dodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the roof
here like a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? That ain't
like being worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you
want. You want excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that's what
YOU want. You're used to it, and you can't do without it. I
couldn't myself. Very well, then; here's this warrant got by Mr.
Tulkinghorn of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen
counties since. What do you say to coming along with me, upon this
warrant, and having a good angry argument before the magistrates?
It'll do you good; it'll freshen you up and get you into training
for another turn at the Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised
to hear a man of your energy talk of giving in. You mustn't do
that. You're half the fun of the fair in the Court of Chancery.
George, you lend Mr. Gridley a hand, and let's see now whether he
won't be better up than down."

"He is very weak," said the trooper in a low voice.

"Is he?" returned Bucket anxiously. "I only want to rouse him. I
don't like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It
would cheer him up more than anything if I could make him a little
waxy with me. He's welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he
likes. I shall never take advantage of it."

The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, which still rings in
my ears.

"Oh, no, Gridley!" she cried as he fell heavily and calmly back
from before her. "Not without my blessing. After so many years!"

The sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and
the shadow had crept upward. But to me the shadow of that pair,
one living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard's departure than
the darkness of the darkest night. And through Richard's farewell
words I heard it echoed: "Of all my old associations, of all my old
pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one
poor soul alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a
tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie
I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken!"

CHAPTER XXV

Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All

There is disquietude in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Black
suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook's
Courtiers are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse;
but Mr. Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it.

For Tom-all-Alone's and Lincoln's Inn Fields persist in harnessing
themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr.
Snagsby's imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers
are Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though
the law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock.
Even in the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken,
it rattles away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr.
Snagsby pauses in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton
baked with potatoes and stares at the kitchen wall.

Mr. Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with.
Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of
it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of
quarter is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the
robes and coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the
surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the
mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers,
whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal
neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective
Mr. Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner,
impossible to be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a
party to some dangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it
is the fearful peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of
his daily life, at any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the
bell, at any entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter,
the secret may take air and fire, explode, and blow up--Mr. Bucket
only knows whom.

For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as
many men unknown do) and says, "Is Mr. Snagsby in?" or words to
that innocent effect, Mr. Snagsby's heart knocks hard at his guilty
breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they
are made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over
the counter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why
they can't speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys
persist in walking into Mr. Snagsby's sleep and terrifying him with
unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little
dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about
the morning, Mr. Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare,
with his little woman shaking him and saying "What's the matter
with the man!"

The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty.
To know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has
under all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double
tooth, which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head,
gives Mr. Snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of
a dog who has a reservation from his master and will look anywhere
rather than meet his eye.

These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not
lost upon her. They impel her to say, "Snagsby has something on
his mind!"  And thus suspicion gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor
Street. From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as
natural and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery Lane. And thus
jealousy gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and
it was always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in
Mrs. Snagsby's breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of
Mr. Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's letters;
to private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box,
and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors,
and a general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.

Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes
ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The 'prentices
think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times.
Guster holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting,
where they were found floating among the orphans) that there is
buried money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a
white beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he
said the Lord's Prayer backwards.

"Who was Nimrod?" Mrs. Snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself.
"Who was that lady--that creature? And who is that boy?"  Now,
Nimrod being as dead as the mighty hunter whose name Mrs. Snagsby
has appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her
mental eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy.
"And who," quoth Mrs. Snagsby for the thousand and first time, "is
that boy? Who is that--!"  And there Mrs. Snagsby is seized with
an inspiration.

He has no respect for Mr. Chadband. No, to be sure, and he
wouldn't have, of course. Naturally he wouldn't, under those
contagious circumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr.
Chadband--why, Mrs. Snagsby heard it herself with her own ears!--to
come back, and be told where he was to go, to be addressed by Mr.
Chadband; and he never came! Why did he never come? Because he
was told not to come. Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha!
Mrs. Snagsby sees it all.

But happily (and Mrs. Snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly
smiles) that boy was met by Mr. Chadband yesterday in the streets;
and that boy, as affording a subject which Mr. Chadband desires to
improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was
seized by Mr. Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to
the police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived
and unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear
in Cook's Court to-morrow night, "'to--mor--row--night," Mrs.
Snagsby repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and
another tight shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will
be here, and to-morrow night Mrs. Snagsby will have her eye upon
him and upon some one else; and oh, you may walk a long while in
your secret ways (says Mrs. Snagsby with haughtiness and scorn),
but you can't blind ME!

Mrs. Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody's ears, but holds her
purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the
savoury preparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes.
Comes Mr. Snagsby in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when
the gorging vessel is replete) the 'prentices and Guster, to be
edified; comes at last, with his slouching head, and his shuflle
backward, and his shuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right,
and his shuffle to the left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy
hand, which he picks as if it were some mangy bird he had caught
and was plucking before eating raw, Jo, the very, very tough
subject Mr. Chadband is to improve.

Mrs. Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo as he is brought into
the little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr. Snagsby the
moment he comes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr. Snagsby? Mr.
Snagsby looks at him. Why should he do that, but that Mrs. Snagsby
sees it all? Why else should that look pass between them, why else
should Mr. Snagsby be confused and cough a signal cough behind his
hand? It is as clear as crystal that Mr. Snagsby is that boy's
father.

'"Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily
exudations from his reverend visage. "Peace be with us! My
friends, why with us? Because," with his fat smile, "it cannot be
against us, because it must be for us; because it is not hardening,
because it is softening; because it does not make war like the
hawk, but comes home unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends,
peace be with us! My human boy, come forward!"

Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband lays the same on Jo's
arm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his
reverend friend's intentions and not at all clear but that
something practical and painful is going to be done to him,
mutters, "You let me alone. I never said nothink to you. You let
me alone."

"No, my young friend," says Chadband smoothly, "I will not let you
alone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a
toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are
become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so
employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your
profit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My
young friend, sit upon this stool."

Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend
gentleman wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms
and is got into the required position with great difficulty and
every possible manifestation of reluctance.

When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband,
retiring behind the table, holds up his bear's-paw and says, "My
friends!"  This is the signal for a general settlement of the
audience. The 'prentices giggle internally and nudge each other.
Guster falls into a staring and vacant state, compounded of a
stunned admiration of Mr. Chadband and pity for the friendless
outcast whose condition touches her nearly. Mrs. Snagsby silently
lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs. Chadband composes herself grimly by
the fire and warms her knees, finding that sensation favourable to
the reception of eloquence.

It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some
member of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his
points with that particular person, who is understood to be
expected to be moved to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other
audible expression of inward working, which expression of inward
working, being echoed by some elderly lady in the next pew and so
communicated like a game of forfeits through a circle of the more
fermentable sinners present, serves the purpose of parliamentary
cheering and gets Mr. Chadband's steam up. From mere force of
habit, Mr. Chadband in saying "My friends!" has rested his eye on
Mr. Snagsby and proceeds to make that ill-starred stationer,
already sufficiently confused, the immediate recipient of his
discourse.

"We have here among us, my friends," says Chadband, "a Gentile and
a heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's and a mover-on
upon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,"
and Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail,
bestows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying that he will throw
him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down,
"a brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations,
devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of
precious stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of
these possessions? Why? Why is he?"  Mr. Chadband states the
question as if he were propoundlng an entirely new riddle of much
ingenuity and merit to Mr. Snagsby and entreating him not to give
it up.

Mr. Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received
just now from his little woman--at about the period when Mr.
Chadband mentioned the word parents--is tempted into modestly
remarking, "I don't know, I'm sure, sir."  On which interruption
Mrs. Chadband glares and Mrs. Snagsby says, "For shame!"

"I hear a voice," says Chadband; "is it a still small voice, my
friends? I fear not, though I fain would hope so--"

"Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.

"Which says, 'I don't know.'  Then I will tell you why. I say this
brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of
relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver,
and of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that
shines in upon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask
you, what is that light?"

Mr. Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not
to be lured on to his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning
forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly
into Mr. Snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned.

"It is," says Chadband, "the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon
of moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth."

Mr. Chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at Mr.
Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that.

"Of Terewth," says Mr. Chadband, hitting him again. "Say not to me
that it is NOT the lamp of lamps. I say to you it is. I say to
you, a million of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I
will proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the
less you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a
speaking-trumpet! I say to you that if you rear yourself against
it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered,
you shall be flawed, you shall be smashed."

The present effect of this flight of oratory--much admired for its
general power by Mr. Chadband's followers--being not only to make
Mr. Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr.
Snagsby in the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a
forehead of brass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate
tradesman becomes yet more disconcerted and is in a very advanced
state of low spirits and false position when Mr. Chadband
accidentally finishes him.

"My friends," he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some time--
and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his pocket-
handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab--"to pursue
the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve,
let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to which I
have alluded. For, my young friends," suddenly addressing the
'prentices and Guster, to their consternation, "if I am told by the
doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally
ask what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I may wish to be
informed of that before I dose myself with either or with both.
Now, my young friends, what is this Terewth then? Firstly (in a
spirit of love), what is the common sort of Terewth--the working
clothes--the every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?"

"Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.

"Is it suppression?"

A shiver in the negative from Mrs. Snagsby.

"Is it reservation?"

A shake of the head from Mrs. Snagsby--very long and very tight.

"No, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names
belongs to it. When this young heathen now among us--who is now,
my friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being
set upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I
should have to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to
conquer, for his sake--when this young hardened heathen told us a
story of a cock, and of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign,
was THAT the Terewth? No. Or if it was partly, was it wholly and
entirely? No, my friends, no!"

If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman's look as it enters
at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole
tenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.

"Or, my juvenile friends," says Chadband, descending to the level
of their comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his
greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the
purpose, "if the master of this house was to go forth into the city
and there see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto
him the mistress of this house, and was to say, 'Sarah, rejoice
with me, for I have seen an elephant!' would THAT be Terewth?"

Mrs. Snagsby in tears.

"Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and
returning said 'Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,'
would THAT be Terewth?"

Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly.

"Or put it, my juvenile friends," said Chadband, stimulated by the
sound, "that the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen--for
parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt--after casting
him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the
young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and
had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their
dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher's meat and
poultry, would THAT be Terewth?"

Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an
unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook's
Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic,
she has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano.
After unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost
consternation, she is pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom,
free from pain, though much exhausted, in which state of affairs
Mr. Snagsby, trampled and crushed in the piano-forte removal, and
extremely timid and feeble, ventures to come out from behind the
door in the drawing-room.

All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up,
ever picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He
spits them out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in
his nature to be an unimprovable reprobate and that it's no good
HIS trying to keep awake, for HE won't never know nothink. Though
it may be, Jo, that there is a history so interesting and affecting
even to minds as near the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on
this earth for common men, that if the Chadbands, removing their
own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple
reverence, would but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as
being eloquent enough without their modest aid--it might hold thee
awake, and thou might learn from it yet!

Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers and the Reverend
Chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend
Chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear
him talk for five minutes. "It an't no good my waiting here no
longer," thinks Jo. "Mr. Snagsby an't a-going to say nothink to me
to-night."  And downstairs he shuffles.

But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the handrail of
the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the
same having been induced by Mrs. Snagsby's screaming. She has her
own supper of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she
ventures to interchange a word or so for the first time.

"Here's something to eat, poor boy," says Guster.

"Thank'ee, mum," says Jo.

"Are you hungry?"

"Jist!" says Jo.

"What's gone of your father and your mother, eh?"

Jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified. For this
orphan charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting
has patted him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his
life that any decent hand has been so laid upon him.

"I never know'd nothink about 'em," says Jo.

"No more didn't I of mine," cries Guster. She is repressing
symptoms favourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at
something and vanishes down the stairs.

"Jo," whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the
step.

"Here I am, Mr. Snagsby!"

"I didn't know you were gone--there's another half-crown, Jo. It
was quite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other
night when we were out together. It would breed trouble. You
can't be too quiet, Jo."

"I am fly, master!"

And so, good night.

A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-
stationer to the room he came from and glides higher up. And
henceforth he begins, go where he will, to be attended by another
shadow than his own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less
quiet than his own. And into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his
own shadow may pass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware! For
the watchful Mrs. Snagsby is there too--bone of his bone, flesh of
his flesh, shadow of his shadow.

CHAPTER XXVI

Sharpshooters

Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the
neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling
to get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the
brightest of times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is
high and are wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out.
Behind dingy blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking
more or less under false names, false hair, false titles, false
jewellery, and false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their
first sleep. Gentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse
from personal experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills;
spies of strong governments that eternally quake with weakness and
miserable fear, broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters,
shufflers, swindlers, and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the
branding-iron beneath their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in
them than was in Nero, and more crime than is in Newgate. For
howsoever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock-frock (and he
can be very bad in both), he is a more designing, callous, and
intolerable devil when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls
himself a gentleman, backs a card or colour, plays a game or so of
billiards, and knows a little about bills and promissory notes than
in any other form he wears. And in such form Mr. Bucket shall find
him, when he will, still pervading the tributary channels of
Leicester Square.

But the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. It wakes
Mr. George of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise,
roll up and stow away their mattresses. Mr. George, having shaved
himself before a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches
out, bare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard
and anon comes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting
rain, and exceedingly cold water. As he rubs himself upon a large
jack-towel, blowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his
hair curling tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more
he rubs it so that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any
less coercive instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb--as he
rubs, and puffs, and polishes, and blows, turning his head from
side to side the more conveniently to excoriate his throat, and
standing with his body well bent forward to keep the wet from his
martial legs, Phil, on his knees lighting a fire, looks round as if
it were enough washing for him to see all that done, and sufficient
renovation for one day to take in the superfluous health his master
throws off.

When Mr. George is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two
hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil,
shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it,
winks with sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr.
George's toilet is soon performed. He fills his pipe, lights it,
and marches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while Phil,
raising a powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares
breakfast. He smokes gravely and marches in slow time. Perhaps
this morning's pipe is devoted to the memory of Gridley in his
grave.

"And so, Phil," says George of the shooting gallery after several
turns in silence, "you were dreaming of the country last night?"

Phil, by the by, said as much in a tone of surprise as he scrambled
out of bed.

"Yes, guv'ner."

"What was it like?"

"I hardly know what it was like, guv'ner," said Phil, considering.

"How did you know it was the country?"

"On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it," says
Phil after further consideration.

"What were the swans doing on the grass?"

"They was a-eating of it, I expect," says Phil.

The master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation
of breakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparation,
being limited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast
requisites for two and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the
fire in the rusty grate; but as Phil has to sidle round a
considerable part of the gallery for every object he wants, and
never brings two objects at once, it takes time under the
circumstances. At length the breakfast is ready. Phil announcing
it, Mr. George knocks the ashes out of his pipe on the hob, stands
his pipe itself in the chimney corner, and sits down to the meal.
When he has helped himself, Phil follows suit, sitting at the
extreme end of the little oblong table and taking his plate on his
knees. Either in humility, or to hide his blackened hands, or
because it is his natural manner of eating.

"The country," says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; "why, I
suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?"

"I see the marshes once," says Phil, contentedly eating his
breakfast.

"What marshes?"

"THE marshes, commander," returns Phil.

"Where are they?"

"I don't know where they are," says Phil; "but I see 'em, guv'ner.
They was flat. And miste."

Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil,
expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to
nobody but Mr. George.

"I was born in the country, Phil."

"Was you indeed, commander?"

"Yes. And bred there."

Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at
his master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee,
still staring at him.

"There's not a bird's note that I don't know," says Mr. George.
"Not many an English leaf or berry that I couldn't name. Not many
a tree that I couldn't climb yet if I was put to it. I was a real
country boy, once. My good mother lived in the country."

"She must have been a fine old lady, guv'ner," Phil observes.

"Aye! And not so old either, five and thirty years ago," says Mr.
George. "But I'll wager that at ninety she would be near as
upright as me, and near as broad across the shoulders."

"Did she die at ninety, guv'ner?" inquires Phil.

"No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!" says the
trooper. "What set me on about country boys, and runaways, and
good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your
eyes upon the country--marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?"

Phil shakes his head.

"Do you want to see it?"

"N-no, I don't know as I do, particular," says Phil.

"The town's enough for you, eh?"

"Why, you see, commander," says Phil, "I ain't acquainted with
anythink else, and I doubt if I ain't a-getting too old to take to
novelties."

"How old ARE you, Phil?" asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys
his smoking saucer to his lips.

"I'm something with a eight in it," says Phil. "It can't be
eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It's betwixt 'em, somewheres."

Mr. George, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its
contents, is laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil--"
when he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on his dirty fingers.

"I was just eight," says Phil, "agreeable to the parish
calculation, when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand,
and I see him a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to
himself wery comfortable, and he says, 'Would you like to come
along a me, my man?'  I says 'Yes,' and him and me and the fire
goes home to Clerkenwell together. That was April Fool Day. I was
able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day come round again,
I says to myself, 'Now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it.'  
April Fool Day after that, I says, 'Now, old chap, you're two and a
eight in it.'  In course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it;
two tens and a eight in it. When it got so high, it got the upper
hand of me, but this is how I always know there's a eight in it."

"Ah!" says Mr. George, resuming his breakfast. "And where's the
tinker?"

"Drink put him in the hospital, guv'ner, and the hospital put him--
in a glass-case, I HAVE heerd," Phil replies mysteriously.

"By that means you got promotion? Took the business, Phil?"

"Yes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn't
much of a beat--round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell,
Smiffeld, and there--poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the
kettles till they're past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers
used to come and lodge at our place; that was the best part of my
master's earnings. But they didn't come to me. I warn't like him.
He could sing 'em a good song. I couldn't! He could play 'em a
tune on any sort of pot you please, so as it was iron or block tin.
I never could do nothing with a pot but mend it or bile it--never
had a note of music in me. Besides, I was too ill-looking, and
their wives complained of me."

"They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd,
Phil!" says the trooper with a pleasant smile.

"No, guv'ner," returns Phil, shaking his head. "No, I shouldn't.
I was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing
to boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when
I was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off,
and swallering the smoke, and what with being nat'rally unfort'nate
in the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich
means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got
older, almost whenever he was too far gone in drink--which was
almost always--my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time.
As to since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men
was given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at
a gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling
at the firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!"

Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied
manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While
drinking it, he says, "It was after the case-filling blow-up when I
first see you, commander. You remember?"

"I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun."

"Crawling, guv'ner, again a wall--"

"True, Phil--shouldering your way on--"

"In a night-cap!" exclaims Phil, excited.

"In a night-cap--"

"And hobbling with a couple of sticks!" cries Phil, still more
excited.

"With a couple of sticks. When--"

"When you stops, you know," cries Phil, putting down his cup and
saucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, "and says to
me, 'What, comrade! You have been in the wars!'  I didn't say much
to you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person
so strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to
such a limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says
you, delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that
it was like a glass of something hot, 'What accident have you met
with? You have been badly hurt. What's amiss, old boy? Cheer up,
and tell us about it!'  Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says
as much to you, you says more to me, I says more to you, you says
more to me, and here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!" cries
Phil, who has started from his chair and unaccountably begun to
sidle away. "If a mark's wanted, or if it will improve the
business, let the customers take aim at me. They can't spoil MY
beauty. I'M all right. Come on! If they want a man to box at,
let 'em box at me. Let 'em knock me well about the head. I don't
mind. If they want a light-weight to be throwed for practice,
Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let 'em throw me. They won't
hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!"

With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and
accompanied by action illustrative of the various exercises
referred to, Phil Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the
gallery, and abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at
him with his head, intended to express devotion to his service. He
then begins to clear away the breakfast.

Mr. George, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the
shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the
gallery into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the
dumb-bells, and afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is
getting "too fleshy," engages with great gravity in solitary
broadsword practice. Meanwhile Phil has fallen to work at his
usual table, where he screws and unscrews, and cleans, and files,
and whistles into small apertures, and blackens himself more and
more, and seems to do and undo everything that can be done and
undone about a gun.

Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage,
where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual
company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery,
bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any
day in the year but the fifth of November.

It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two
bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched
mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular
verses commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old
England up alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly
closed as the chair is put down. At which point the figure in it
gasping, "O Lord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!" adds, "How de do, my
dear friend, how de do?"  Mr. George then descries, in the
procession, the venerable Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended
by his granddaughter Judy as body-guard.

"Mr. George, my dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed, removing
his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has
nearly throttled coming along, "how de do? You're surprised to see
me, my dear friend."

"I should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend
in the city," returns Mr. George.

"I am very seldom out," pants Mr. Smallweed. "I haven't been out
for many months. It's inconvenient--and it comes expensive. But I
longed so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?"

"I am well enough," says Mr. George. "I hope you are the same."

"You can't be too well, my dear friend."  Mr. Smallweed takes him
by both hands. "I have brought my granddaughter Judy. I couldn't
keep her away. She longed so much to see you."

"Hum! She hears it calmly!" mutters Mr. George.

"So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the
corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and
carried me here that I might see my dear friend in his own
establishment! This," says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the
bearer, who has been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws
adjusting his windpipe, "is the driver of the cab. He has nothing
extra. It is by agreement included in his fare. This person," the
other bearer, "we engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer.
Which is twopence. Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure
you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't
have employed this person."

Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a glance of considerable
terror and a half-subdued "O Lord! Oh, dear me!"  Nor in his
apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for
Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap
before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the
air of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly
old bird of the crow species.

"Judy, my child," says Grandfather Smallweed, "give the person his
twopence. It's a great deal for what he has done."

The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human
fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of
London, ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a "mission" for
holding horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with
anything but transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it
over-handed, and retires.

"My dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, "would you be so
kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire,
and I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!"

His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by
the suddenness with which Mr. Squod, like a genie, catches him up,
chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.

"O Lord!" says Mr. Smallweed, panting. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my
stars! My dear friend, your workman is very strong--and very
prompt. O Lord, he is very prompt! Judy, draw me back a little.
I'm being scorched in the legs," which indeed is testified to the
noses of all present by the smell of his worsted stockings.

The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from
the fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released
his overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr.
Smallweed again says, "Oh, dear me! O Lord!" and looking about and
meeting Mr. George's glance, again stretches out both hands.

"My dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your
establishment? It's a delightful place. It's a picture! You
never find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my
dear friend?" adds Grandfather Smallweed, very ill at ease.

"No, no. No fear of that."

"And your workman. He--Oh, dear me!--he never lets anything off
without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?"

"He has never hurt anybody but himself," says Mr. George, smiling.

"But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good
deal, and he might hurt somebody else," the old gentleman returns.
"He mightn't mean it--or he even might. Mr. George, will you order
him to leave his infernal firearms alone and go away?"

Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires, empty-handed, to
the other end of the gallery. Mr. Smallweed, reassured, falls to
rubbing his legs.

"And you're doing well, Mr. George?" he says to the trooper,
squarely standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in
his hand. "You are prospering, please the Powers?"

Mr. George answers with a cool nod, adding, "Go on. You have not
come to say that, I know."

"You are so sprightly, Mr. George," returns the venerable
grandfather. "You are such good company."

"Ha ha! Go on!" says Mr. George.

"My dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp.
It might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr.
George. Curse him!" says the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy
as the trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. "He owes
me money, and might think of paying off old scores in this
murdering place. I wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and
he'd shave her head off."

Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old
man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says
quietly, "Now for it!"

"Ho!" cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful
chuckle. "Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?"

"For a pipe," says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his
chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills
it and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.

This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so
difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes
exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent
vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the
visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman's nails are
long and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green
and watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he
claws, to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless
bundle, he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed
eyes of Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something
more than the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and
pokes him in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that
part which the science of self-defence would call his wind, that in
his grievous distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour's
rammer.

When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a
white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out
her weazen forefinger and gives Mr. George one poke in the back.
The trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her
esteemed grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares
rigidly at the fire.

"Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U--u--u--ugh!" chatters Grandfather Smallweed,
swallowing his rage. "My dear friend!"  (still clawing).

"I tell you what," says Mr. George. "If you want to converse with
me, you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can't go
about and about. I haven't the art to do it. I am not clever
enough. It don't suit me. When you go winding round and round
me," says the trooper, putting his pipe between his lips again,
"damme, if I don't feel as if I was being smothered!"

And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to
assure himself that he is not smothered yet.

"If you have come to give me a friendly call," continues Mr.
George, "I am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see
whether there's any property on the premises, look about you; you
are welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!"

The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives
her grandfather one ghostly poke.

"You see! It's her opinion too. And why the devil that young
woman won't sit down like a Christian," says Mr. George with his
eyes musingly fixed on Judy, "I can't comprehend."

"She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir," says Grandfather
Smallweed. "I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some
attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot"
(snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), "but I need
attention, my dear friend."

"Well!" returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old
man. "Now then?"

"My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with
a pupil of yours."

"Has he?" says Mr. George. "I am sorry to hear it."

"Yes, sir." Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. "He is a fine
young soldier now, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends
came forward and paid it all up, honourable."

"Did they?" returns Mr. George. "Do you think your friend in the
city would like a piece of advice?"

"I think he would, my dear friend. From you."

"I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter.
There's no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my
knowledge, is brought to a dead halt."

"No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. George. No, no, no, sir,"
remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare
legs. "Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and
he is good for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his
commission, and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is
good for his chance in a wife, and--oh, do you know, Mr. George, I
think my friend would consider the young gentleman good for
something yet?" says Grandfather Smallweed, turning up his velvet
cap and scratching his ear like a monkey.

Mr. George, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his
chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if
he were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has
taken.

"But to pass from one subject to another," resumes Mr. Smallweed.
"'To promote the conversation, as a joker might say. To pass, Mr.
George, from the ensign to the captain."

"What are you up to, now?" asks Mr. George, pausing with a frown in
stroking the recollection of his moustache. "What captain?"

"Our captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon."

"Oh! That's it, is it?" says Mr. George with a low whistle as he
sees both grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. "You
are there! Well? What about it? Come, I won't be smothered any
more. Speak!"

"My dear friend," returns the old man, "I was applied--Judy, shake
me up a little!--I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and
my opinion still is that the captain is not dead."

"Bosh!" observes Mr. George.

"What was your remark, my dear friend?" inquires the old man with
his hand to his ear.

"Bosh!"

"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Mr. George, of my opinion you
can judge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and
the reasons given for asking 'em. Now, what do you think the
lawyer making the inquiries wants?"

"A job," says Mr. George.

"Nothing of the kind!"

"Can't be a lawyer, then," says Mr. George, folding his arms with
an air of confirmed resolution.

"My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see
some fragment in Captain Hawdon's writing. He don't want to keep
it. He only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his
possession."

"Well?"

"Well, Mr. George. Happening to remember the advertisement
concerning Captain Hawdon and any information that could be given
respecting him, he looked it up and came to me--just as you did, my
dear friend. WILL you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I
should have missed forming such a friendship if you hadn't come!"

"Well, Mr. Smallweed?" says Mr. George again after going through
the ceremony with some stiffness.

"I had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague
pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him,"
says the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances
of a prayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry
hands, "I 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 bugged 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."