The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  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 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!”

  “O! 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 chair 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. O 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 be 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 advertisements 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.

  “Ay, 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, shri
lly 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!” replies 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 fail 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 pigmy.

  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 wile 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 evidence 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 the 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 gas-lights (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 are being pursued in George’s Shooting Gallery tonight; 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 22

  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 tonight.

  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 on 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 today, 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.