BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la Sumar

CHAPTER XXXIV  

A Turn of the Screw

"Now, what," says Mr. George, "may this be?  Is it blank cartridge  or ball?  A flash in the pan or a shot?"  An open letter is the subject of the trooper's speculations, and it  seems to perplex him mightily.  He looks at it at arm's length,  brings it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his  left hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on  that side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot  satisfy himself.  He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy  palm, and thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a  halt before it every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye.   Even that won't do.  "Is it," Mr. George still muses, "blank  cartridge or ball?"  Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in  the distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march  time and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back  again to the girl he left behind him.  

"Phil!" 

The trooper beckons as he calls him.  Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he  were going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander  like a bayonet-charge.  Certain splashes of white show in high  relief upon his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the  handle of the brush. 

"Attention, Phil!  Listen to this." 

"Steady, commander, steady." 

"'Sir.  Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity  for my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months'  date drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted,  for the sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence,  will become due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take  up the same on presentation.  Yours, Joshua Smallweed.'  What do  you make of that, Phil?" 

"Mischief, guv'ner." 

"Why?" 

"I think," replies Phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle  in his forehead with the brush-handle, "that mischeevious  consequences is always meant when money's asked for." 

"Lookye, Phil," says the trooper, sitting on the table. 

"First and  last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal  in interest and one thing and another." 

Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very  unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the  transaction as being made more promising by this incident. 

"And lookye further, Phil," says the trooper, staying his premature  conclusions with a wave of his hand. 

"There has always been an  understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed.  And  it has been renewed no end of times.  What do you say now?" 

"I say that I think the times is come to a end at last." 

"You do?  Humph!  I am much of the same mind myself." 

"Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?" 

"The same." 

"Guv'ner," says Phil with exceeding gravity, "he's a leech in his  dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in  his twistings, and a lobster in his claws." 

Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after  waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of  him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he  has in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical  medium that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady.   George, having folded the letter, walks in that direction. 

"There IS a way, commander," says Phil, looking cunningly at him,  "of settling this." 

"Paying the money, I suppose?  I wish I could."  Phil shakes his head. 

"No, guv'ner, no; not so bad as that.  There  IS a way," says Phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush;  "what I'm a-doing at present." 

"Whitewashing."  Phil nods. 

"A pretty way that would be!  Do you know what would become of the  Bagnets in that case?  Do you know they would be ruined to pay off  my old scores?  YOU'RE a moral character," says the trooper, eyeing  him in his large way with no small indignation; "upon my life you  are, Phil!"  Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting  earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush  and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb,  that he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so  much as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy  family when steps are audible in the long passage without, and a  cheerful voice is heard to wonder whether George is at home.  Phil,  with a look at his master, hobbles up, saying, "Here's the guv'ner,  Mrs. Bagnet!  Here he is!" and the old girl herself, accompanied by  Mr. Bagnet, appears.  The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the  year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very  clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so  interesting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe  from another quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and  an umbrella.  The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a  part of the old girl's presence out of doors.  It is of no colour  known in this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle,  with a metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a  little model of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval  glasses out of a pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has  not that tenacious capacity of sticking to its post that might be  desired in an article long associated with the British army. 

The  old girl's umbrella is of a flabby habit of waist and seems to be  in need of stays--an appearance that is possibly referable to its  having served through a series of years at home as a cupboard and  on journeys as a carpet bag.  She never puts it up, having the  greatest reliance on her well-proved cloak with its capacious hood,  but generally uses the instrument as a wand with which to point out  joints of meat or bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the  attention of tradesmen by a friendly poke.  Without her market- basket, which is a sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she  never stirs abroad.  Attended by these her trusty companions,  therefore, her honest sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough  straw bonnet, Mrs. Bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright,  in George's Shooting Gallery. 

"Well, George, old fellow," says she, "and how do YOU do, this  sunshiny morning?" 

Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long  breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest.  Having a  faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such  positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough  bench, unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses  her arms, and looks perfectly comfortable.  Mr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade  and with Phil, on whom Mrs. Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured  nod and smile. 

"Now, George," said Mrs. Bagnet briskly, "here we are, Lignum and  myself"--she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on  account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old  regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in  compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his  physiognomy--"just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as  usual about that security.  Give him the new bill to sign, George,  and he'll sign it like a man." 

"I was coming to you this morning," observes the trooper  reluctantly. 

"Yes, we thought you'd come to us this morning, but we turned out  early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and  came to you instead--as you see!  For Lignum, he's tied so close  now, and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good.  But  what's the matter, George?" asks Mrs. Bagnet, stopping in her  cheerful talk. 

"You don't look yourself." 

"I am not quite myself," returns the trooper; "I have been a little  put out, Mrs. Bagnet." 

Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. 

"George!" holding  up her forefinger. 

"Don't tell me there's anything wrong about  that security of Lignum's!  Don't do it, George, on account of the  children!"  The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage. 

"George," says Mrs. Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and  occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. 

"If you  have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum's,  and if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger  of being sold up--and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain  as print--you have done a shameful action and have deceived us  cruelly.  I tell you, cruelly, George.  There!" 

Mr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts  his large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it  from a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet. 

"George," says that old girl, "I wonder at you!  George, I am  ashamed of you!  George, I couldn't have believed you would have  done it!  I always knew you to be a rolling sone that gathered no  moss, but I never thought you would have taken away what little  moss there was for Bagnet and the children to lie upon.  You know  what a hard-working, steady-going chap he is.  You know what Quebec  and Malta and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or  could, have had the heart to serve us so.  Oh, George!"  Mrs.  Bagnet gathers up her cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine  manner, "How could you do it?" 

Mrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as  if the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr.  George, who has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the  grey cloak and straw bonnet.  "Mat," says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but  still looking at his wife, "I am sorry you take it so much to  heart, because I do hope it's not so bad as that comes to.  I  certainly have, this morning, received this letter"--which he reads  aloud--"but I hope it may be set right yet.  As to a rolling stone,  why, what you say is true.  I AM a rolling stone, and I never  rolled in anybody's way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least  good to.  But it's impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like  your wife and family better than I like 'em, Mat, and I trust  you'll look upon me as forgivingly as you can.  Don't think I've  kept anything from you.  I haven't had the letter more than a  quarter of an hour." 

"Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, "will you  tell him my opinion?" 

"Oh! Why didn't he marry," Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and  half crying, "Joe Pouch's widder in North America?  Then he  wouldn't have got himself into these troubles."  "The old girl," says Mr. Baguet, "puts it correct--why didn't you?" 

"Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope," returns the  trooper. 

"Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to  Joe Pouch's widder.  What shall I do?  You see all I have got about  me.  It's not mine; it's yours.  Give the word, and I'll sell off  every morsel.  If I could have hoped it would have brought in  nearly the sum wanted, I'd have sold all long ago.  Don't believe  that I'll leave you or yours in the lurch, Mat.  I'd sell myself  first.  I only wish," says the trooper, giving himself a  disparaging blow in the chest, "that I knew of any one who'd buy  such a second-hand piece of old stores." 

"Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet, "give him another bit of my mind." 

"George," says the old girl, "you are not so much to be blamed, on  full consideration, except for ever taking this business without  the means." 

"And that was like me!" observes the penitent trooper, shaking his  head. 

"Like me, I know." 

"Silence!  The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "is correct--in her way  of giving my opinions--hear me out!" 

"That was when you never ought to have asked for the security,  George, and when you never ought to have got it, all things  considered.  But what's done can't be undone.  You are always an  honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your  power, though a little flighty.  On the other hand, you can't admit  but what it's natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging  over our heads.  So forget and forgive all round, George.  Come!   Forget and forgive all round!"  Mrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her  husband the other, Mr. George gives each of them one of his and  holds them while he speaks. 

"I do assure you both, there's nothing I wouldn't do to discharge  this obligation.  But whatever I have been able to scrape together  has gone every two months in keeping it up.  We have lived plainly  enough here, Phil and I.  But the gallery don't quite do what was  expected of it, and it's not--in short, it's not the mint.  It was  wrong in me to take it?  Well, so it was.  But I was in a manner  drawn into that step, and I thought it might steady me, and set me  up, and you'll try to overlook my having such expectations, and  upon my soul, I am very much obliged to you, and very much ashamed  of myself."  With these concluding words, Mr. George gives a shake  to each of the hands he holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace  or two in a broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a  final confession and were immediately going to be shot with all  military honours.  "George, hear me out!" says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. 

"Old  girl, go on!"  Mr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to  observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that  it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr.  Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and  hold harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money.  Mr. George,  entirely assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr.  Bagnet to the enemy's camp. 

"Don't you mind a woman's hasty word, George," says Mrs. Bagnet,  patting him on the shoulder. 

"I trust my old Lignum to you, and I  am sure you'll bring him through it." 

The trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring  Lignum through it somehow.  Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak,  basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of  her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of  mollifying Mr. Smallweed.  Whether there are two people in England less likely to come  satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Smallweed than Mr.  George and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned.   Also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square  shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same  limits two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the  Smallweedy affairs of life.  As they proceed with great gravity  through the streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr.  Bagnet, observing his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a  friendly part to refer to Mrs. Bagnet's late sally. 

"George, you know the old girl--she's as sweet and as mild as milk.   But touch her on the children--or myself--and she's off like  gunpowder." 

"It does her credit, Mat!"  "George," says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, "the old  girl--can't do anything--that don't do her credit.  More or less.   I never say so.  Discipline must he maintained." 

"She's worth her weight in gold," says the trooper. 

"In gold?" says Mr. Bagnet. 

"I'll tell you what.  The old girl's  weight--is twelve stone six.  Would I take that weight--in any  metal--for the old girl?  No.  Why not?  Because the old girl's  metal is far more precious---than the preciousest metal.  And she's  ALL metal!" 

"You are right, Mat!" 

"When she took me--and accepted of the ring--she 'listed under me  and the children--heart and head, for life.  She's that earnest,"  says Mr. Bagnet, "and true to her colours--that, touch us with a  finger--and she turns out--and stands to her arms. 

If the old girl  fires wide--once in a way--at the call of duty--look over it,  George.  For she's loyal!" 

"Why, bless her, Mat," returns the trooper, "I think the higher of  her for it!" 

"You are right!" says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm,  though without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. 

"Think as  high of the old girl--as the rock of Gibraltar--and still you'll be  thinking low--of such merits.  But I never own to it before her.   Discipline must be maintained." 

These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather  Smallweed's house.  The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who,  having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but  indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she  consults the oracle as to their admission.  The oracle may be  inferred to give consent from the circumstance of her returning  with the words on her honey lips that they can come in if they want  to it.  Thus privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with  his feet in the drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath  and Mrs. Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is  not to sing. 

"My dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed with those two lean  affectionate arms of his stretched forth. 

"How de do?  How de do?   Who is our friend, my dear friend?" 

"Why this," returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at  first, "is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of  ours, you know." 

"Oh! Mr. Bagnet?  Surely!"  The old man looks at him under his  hand. 

"Hope you're well, Mr. Bagnet?  Fine man, Mr. George!  Military  air, sir!"  No chairs being offered, Mr. George brings one forward for Bagnet  and one for himself.  They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no  power of bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose. 

"Judy," says Mr. Smallweed, "bring the pipe." 

"Why, I don't know," Mr. George interposes, "that the young woman  need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not  inclined to smoke it to-day." 

"Ain't you?" returns the old man. 

"Judy, bring the pipe." 

"The fact is, Mr. Smallweed," proceeds George, "that I find myself  in rather an unpleasant state of mind.  It appears to me, sir, that  your friend in the city has been playing tricks." 

"Oh, dear no!" says Grandfather Smallweed. 

"He never does that!" 

"Don't he?  Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might  be HIS doing.  This, you know, I am speaking of.  This letter."  Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of  the letter. 

"What does it mean?" asks Mr. George. 

"Judy," says the old man. 

"Have you got the pipe?  Give it to me.   Did you say what does it mean, my good friend?" 

"Aye!  Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed," urges the  trooper, constraining himself to speak as smoothly and  confidentially as he can, holding the open letter in one hand and  resting the broad knuckles of the other on his thigh, "a good lot  of money has passed between us, and we are face to face at the  present moment, and are both well aware of the understanding there  has always been.  I am prepared to do the usual thing which I have  done regularly and to keep this matter going.  I never got a letter  like this from you before, and I have been a little put about by it  this morning, because here's my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you  know, had none of the money--" 

"I DON'T know it, you know," says the old man quietly. 

"Why, con-found you--it, I mean--I tell you so, don't I?" 

"Oh, yes, you tell me so," returns Grandfather Smallweed. 

"But I  don't know it." 

"Well!" says the trooper, swallowing his fire. 

"I know it."  Mr. Smallweed replies with excellent temper, "Ah!  That's quite  another thing!"  And adds, "But it don't matter.  Mr. Bagnet's  situation is all one, whether or no." 

The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair  comfortably and to propitiate Mr. Smallweed by taking him upon his  own terms. 

"That's just what I mean.  As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here's  Matthew Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no.  Now, you see,  that makes his good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for  whereas I'm a harurn-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more  kicks than halfpence come natural to, why he's a steady family man,  don't you see?  Now, Mr. Smallweed," says the trooper, gaining  confidence as he proceeds in his soldierly mode of doing business,  "although you and I are good friends enough in a certain sort of a  way, I am well aware that I can't ask you to let my friend Bagnet  off entirely." 

"Oh, dear, you are too modest.  You can ASK me anything, Mr.  George."  (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather  Smallweed to-day.) 

"And you can refuse, you mean, eh?  Or not you so much, perhaps, as  your friend in the city?  Ha ha ha!"  "Ha ha ha!" echoes Grandfather Smallweed.  In such a very hard  manner and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet's  natural gravity is much deepened by the contemplation of that  venerable man. 

"Come!" says the sanguine George. 

"I am glad to find we can be  pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly.  Here's my  friend Bagnet, and here am I.  We'll settle the matter on the spot,  if you please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way.  And you'll ease my  friend Bagnet's mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll  just mention to him what our understanding is."  Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "Oh, good  gracious!  Oh!" 

Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is  found to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose  chin has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and  contempt.  Mr. Bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound. 

"But I think you asked me, Mr. George"--old Smallweed, who all this  time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now--"I think you  asked me, what did the letter mean?" 

"Why, yes, I did," returns the trooper in his off-hand way, "but I  don't care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant." 

Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's  head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces. 

"That's what it means, my dear friend.  I'll smash you.  I'll  crumble you.  I'll powder you.  Go to the devil!"  The two friends rise and look at one another.  Mr. Bagnet's gravity  has now attained its profoundest point. 

"Go to the devil!" repeats the old man. 

"I'll have no more of your  pipe-smokings and swaggerings.  What?  You're an independent  dragoon, too!  Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been  there before) and show your independeuce now, will you?  Come, my  dear friend, there's a chance for you.  Open the street door, Judy;  put these blusterers out! 

Call in help if they don't go.  Put 'em  out!"  He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on  the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his  amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is  instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy.  Utterly confounded, Mr.  George awhile stands looking at the knocker.  Mr. Bagnet, in a  perfect abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little  parlour window like a sentry and looks in every time he passes,  apparently revolving something in his mind. 

"Come, Mat," says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, "we  must try the lawyer.  Now, what do you think of this rascal?" 

Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour,  replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, "If my  old girl had been here--I'd have told him!"  Having so discharged  himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and  marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.  When they present themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mr.  Tulkinghorn is engaged and not to be seen.  He is not at all  willing to see them, for when they have waited a full hour, and the  clerk, on his bell being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning  as much, he brings forth no more encouraging message than that Mr.  Tulkinghorn has nothing to say to them and they had better not  wait.  They do wait, however, with the perseverance of military  tactics, and at last the bell rings again and the client in  possession comes out of Mr. Tulkinghorn's room.  The client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Rouncewell,  housekeeper at Chesney Wold.  She comes out of the sanctuary with a  fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door.  She is  treated with some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his  pew to show her through the outer office and to let her out.  The  old lady is thanking him for his attention when she observes the  comrades in waiting. 

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?"  The clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr.  George not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place.  Mr.  Bagnet takes upon himself to reply, "Yes, ma'am.  Formerly." 

"I thought so.  I was sure of it.  My heart warms, gentlemen, at  the sight of you.  It always does at the sight of such.  God bless  you, gentlemen!  You'll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once  who went for a soldier.  A fine handsome youth he was, and good in  his bold way, though some people did disparage him to his poor  mother.  I ask your pardon for troubling you, sir.  God bless you,  gentlemen!" 

"Same to you, ma'am!" returns Mr. Bagnet with right good will.  There is something very touching in the earnestness of the old  lady's voice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old  figure.  But Mr. George is so occupied with the almanac over the  fireplace (calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he  does not look round until she has gone away and the door is closed  upon her.  "George,"

Mr. Bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the  almanac at last. 

"Don't be cast down!  'Why, soldiers, why--should  we be melancholy, boys?'  Cheer up, my hearty!"  The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there  and Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility,  "Let 'em come in then!" they pass into the great room with the  painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire.  "Now, you men, what do you want?  Sergeant, I told you the last  time I saw you that I don't desire your company here." 

Sergeant replies--dashed within the last few minutes as to his  usual manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage--that he  has received this letter, has been to Mr. Smallweed about it, and  has been referred there.  "I have nothing to say to you," rejoins Mr. Tulkinghorn. 

"If you  get into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences.   You have no occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?"  Sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money.  "Very well!  Then the other man--this man, if this is he--must pay  it for you."  Sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with  the money either. 

"Very well!  Then you must pay it between you or you must both be  sued for it and both suffer.  You have had the money and must  refund it.  You are not to pocket other people's pounds, shillings,  and pence and escape scot-free."  The lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire.  Mr.  George hopes he will have the goodness to-- 

"I tell you, sergeant, I have nothing to say to you.  I don't like  your associates and don't want you here.  This matter is not at all  in my course of practice and is not in my office.  Mr. Smallweed is  good enough to offer these affairs to me, but they are not in my  way.  You must go to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn." 

"I must make an apology to you, sir," says Mr. George, "for  pressing myself upon you with so little encouragement--which is  almost as unpleasant to me as it can be to you--but would you let  me say a private word to you?"  Mr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into  one of the window recesses. 

"Now!  I have no time to waste."  In  the midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a  sharp look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back  to the light and to have the other with his face towards it. 

"Well, sir," says Mr. George, "this man with me is the other party  implicated in this unfortunate affair--nominally, only nominally-- and my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my  account.  He is a most respectable man with a wife and family,  formerly in the Royal Artillery--" 

"My friend, I don't care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal  Artillery establishment--officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses,  guns, and ammunition." 

"'Tis likely, sir.  But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife  and family being injured on my account.  And if I could bring them  through this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up  without any other consideration what you wanted of me the other  day." 

"Have you got it here?" 

"I have got it here, sir." 

"Sergeant," the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far  more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence,  "make up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. 

After  I have finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won't re- open it.  Understand that.  You can leave here, for a few days,  what you say you have brought here if you choose; you can take it  away at once if you choose.  In case you choose to leave it here, I  can do this for you--I can replace this matter on its old footing,  and I can go so far besides as to give you a written undertaking  that this man Bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until you  have been proceeded against to the utmost, that your means shall be  exhausted before the creditor looks to his.  This is in fact all  but freeing him.  Have you decided?" 

The trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long  breath, "I must do it, sir." 

So Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes  the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who  has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand  on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and  seems exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express  his sentiments.  The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a  folded paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer's  elbow. 

"'Tis ouly a letter of instructions, sir.  The last I ever  had from him." 

Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression,  and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr.  Tulkinghorn when he opens and reads the letter!  He refolds it and  lays it in his desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death.  Nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same  frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, "You can go.   

Show these men out, there!"  Being shown out, they repair to Mr.  Bagnet's residence to dine.  Boiled beef and greens constitute the day's variety on the former  repast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the  meal in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being  that rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms  without a hint that it might be Better and catches light from any  little spot of darkness near her.  The spot on this occasion is the  darkened brow of Mr. George; he is unusually thoughtful and  depressed.  At first Mrs. Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments  of Quebec and Malta to restore him, but finding those young ladies  sensible that their existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their  usual frolicsome acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and  leaves him to deploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic  hearth.  But he does not.  He remains in close order, clouded and depressed.   During the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and  Mr. Bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he  was at dinner.  He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders,  lets his pipe out, fills the breast of Mr. Bagnet with perturbation  and dismay by showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco. 

Therefore when Mrs. Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the  invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr. Bagnet growls,  "Old girl!" and winks monitions to her to find out what's the  matter. 

"Why, George!" says Mrs. Bagnet, quietly threading her needle.   

"How low you are!"  "Am I?  Not good company?  Well, I am afraid I am not." 

"He ain't at all like Blulfy, mother!" cries little Malta. 

"Because he ain't well, I think, mother," adds Quebec. 

"Sure that's a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!" returns the  trooper, kissing the young damsels. 

"But it's true," with a sigh,  "true, I am afraid.  These little ones are always right!" 

"George," says Mrs. Bagnet, working busily, "if I thought you cross  enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier's wife--who  could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done  it almost--said this morning, I don't know what I shouldn't say to  you now." 

"My kind soul of a darling," returns the trooper. 

"Not a morsel of  it." 

"Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say was  that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you'd bring him through  it.  And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!" 

"Thankee, my dear!" says George. 

"I am glad of your good opinion." 

In giving Mrs. Bagnet's hand, with her work in it, a friendly  shake--for she took her seat beside him--the trooper's attention is  attracted to her face.  After looking at it for a little while as  she plies her needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his  stool in the corner, and beckons that fifer to him. 

"See there, my boy," says George, very gently smoothing the  mother's hair with his hand, "there's a good loving forehead for  you!  All bright with love of you, my boy.  A little touched by the  sun and the weather through following your father about and taking  care of you, but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree."  Mr. Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies,  the highest approbation and acquiescence. 

"The time will come, my boy," pursues the trooper, "when this hair  of your mother's will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and  re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she'll be then.  Take  care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, 'I  never whitened a hair of her dear head--I never marked a sorrowful  line in her face!'  For of all the many things that you can think  of when you are a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!"  Mr. George concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy  beside his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry  about him, that he'll smoke his pipe in the street a bit.

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