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

by Lynn Shepherd

  “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 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 of a lamppost, 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 stone 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. O 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. Bagnet, “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 trea
d, 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 be 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 today.”

  “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.”

  “O 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 harum-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.”

  “O dear, you are too modest. You can ask me anything, Mr. George.” (There is an Ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed today.)

  “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, “O good gracious! O!”—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 independence 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.