Bleak House

  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 practiced 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 honor 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 fulness of his dark 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 practice at your gallery?"

  "All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to 'prentices. I have had French women 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 acknowledgement 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 we
re 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 anyone: 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 honors 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 connection--seemed to die out of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to come, to any result. 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 though 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 honor! 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 curtsey 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 neighborhood of Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which Mr. George apologised, 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 gray hair, wearing spectacle
s, and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-headed 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 look'ee 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."