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

by Lynn Shepherd

  “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.”

  “O! 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 readjusts 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 legs 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?”

  “Ay! 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.”

  “O 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 hugged 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 27

  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. B
ut 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 Chensey 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.”

  As Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper stands, and says within himself perchance, “You’ll do, my friend!”

  “Sit down, sergeant,” he repeats as he comes to his table, which is set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. “Cold and raw this morning, cold and raw!” Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars, alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands, and looks (from behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a little semicircle before him.

  “Now, I can feel what I am about!” (as perhaps he can in two senses) “Mr. Smallweed.” The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Judy, to bear his part in the conversation. “You have brought our good friend the sergeant, I see.”

  “Yes, sir,” returns Mr. Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer’s wealth and influence.

  “And what does the sergeant say about this business?”

  “Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed, with a tremulous wave of his shrivelled hand, “this is the gentleman, sir.”

  Mr. George salutes the gentleman; but otherwise sits bolt upright and profoundly silent—very forward in his chair, as if the full complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him.

  Mr. Tulkinghorn proceeds: “Well, George?—I believe your name is George?”

  “It is so, sir.”

  “What do you say, George?”

  “I ask your pardon, sir,” returns the trooper, “but I should wish to know what you say?”

  “Do you mean in point of reward?”

  “I mean in point of everything, sir.”

  This is so very trying to Mr. Smallweed’s temper, that he suddenly breaks out with “You’re a Brimstone beast!” and as suddenly asks pardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn; excusing himself for this slip of the tongue, by saying to Judy, “I was thinking of your grandmother, my dear.”

  “I supposed, sergeant,” Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes, as he leans on one side of his chair and crosses his legs, “that Mr. Smallweed might have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services, and were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir, that is so,” says Mr. George, with military brevity.

  “Therefore you may happen to have in your possession something—anything, no matter what—accounts, instructions, orders, a letter, anything—in Captain Hawdon’s writing. I wish to compare his writing with some that I have. If you can give me the opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four, five, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say.”

  “Noble, my dear friend!” cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his eyes.

  “If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing, against your inclination—though I should prefer to have it.”

  Mr. George sits squarely in exactly the same attitude, looks at the painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Smallweed scratches the air.

  “The question is,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued, uninteresting way, “first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon’s writing?”

  “First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon’s writing, sir,” repeats Mr. George.

  “Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?”

  “Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it, sir,” repeats Mr. George.

  “Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written paper tied together.

  “Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so,” repeats Mr. George.

  All three repetitions Mr. George pronounces in a mechanical manner, looking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation.

  “Well?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “What do you say?”

  “Well, sir,” replies Mr. George, rising erect and looking immense, “I would rather, if you’ll excuse me, have nothing to do with this.”

  Mr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, “Why not?”

  “Why, sir,” returns the trooper. “Except on military compulsion, I am not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in Scotland a ne’er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr. Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of this kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my sensation,” says Mr. George, looking round upon the company, “at the present moment.”

  With that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on the lawyer’s table, and three strides backward to resume his former station: where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground, and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever.

  Under this provocation, Mr. Smallweed’s favourite adjective of disparagement is so close to his tongue, that he begins the words “my dear friend” with the monosyllable “Brim”; thus converting the possessive pronoun into Brimmy, and appearing to have an impediment in his speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear friend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace: confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable. Mr. Tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, “You are the best judge of your own interest, sergeant.” “Take care you do no harm by this.” “Please yourself, please yourself.” “If you know what you mean, that’s quite enough.” These he utters with an appearance of perfect indifference, as he looks over the papers on his table, and prepares to write a letter.

  Mr. George looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling
to the ground, from the ground to Mr. Smallweed, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Tulkinghorn, and from Mr. Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again; often in his perplexity changing the leg on which he rests.

  “I do assure you, sir,” says Mr. George, “not to say it offensively, that between you and Mr. Smallweed here, I really am being smothered fifty times over. I really am, sir. I am not a match for you gentlemen. Will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain’s hand, in the case that I could find any specimen of it?”

  Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. “No. If you were a man of business, sergeant, you would not need to be informed, that there are confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such wants, in the profession to which I belong. But if you are afraid of doing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest about that.”

  “Ay! He is dead, sir.”

  “Is he?” Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write.

  “Well, sir,” says the trooper, looking into his hat after another disconcerted pause; “I am sorry not to have given you more satisfaction. If it would be any satisfaction to any one, that I should be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing to do with this, by a friend of mine, who has a better head for business than I have, and who is an old soldier, I am willing to consult with him. I—I really am so completely smothered myself at present,” says Mr. George, passing his hand hopelessly across his brow, “that I don’t know but what it might be a satisfaction to me.”

  Mr. Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper’s taking counsel with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of five guineas or more, that Mr. George engages to go and see him. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing either way.

  “I’ll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir,” says the trooper, “and I’ll take the liberty of looking in again with the final answer in the course of the day. Mr. Smallweed, if you wish to be carried downstairs—”