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

by Lynn Shepherd

  “And where’s Bart?” Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart’s twin-sister.

  “He an’t come in yet,” says Judy.

  “It’s his tea-time, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “How much do you mean to say it wants then?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Hey?”

  “Ten minutes.”—(Loud on the part of Judy.)

  “Ho!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “Ten minutes.”

  Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money, and screeches, like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, “Ten ten-pound notes!”

  Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her.

  “Drat you, be quiet!” says the good old man.

  The effects of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only doubles up Mrs. Smallweed’s head against the side of her porter’s chair, and causes her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a highly unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr. Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into his porter’s chair, like a broken puppet. The excellent old gentleman being, at these times, a mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two operations at the hands of his granddaughter, of being shaken up like a great bottle, and poked and punched like a great bolster. Some indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and the sharer of his life’s evening again sit fronting one another in their two porter’s chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on their post by the Black Serjeant, Death.

  Judy the twin is worthy company for these associates. She is so indubitably sister to Mr. Smallweed the younger, that the two kneaded into one would hardly make a young person of average proportions; while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness to the monkey tribe, that, attired in a spangled robe and cap, she might walk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-organ without exciting much remark as an unusual specimen. Under existing circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare gown of brown stuff.

  Judy never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at any game. She once or twice fell into children’s company when she was about ten years old, but the children couldn’t get on with Judy, and Judy couldn’t get on with them. She seemed like an animal of another species, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides. It is very doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen the thing done, that the probabilities are strong the other way. Of anything like a youthful laugh, she certainly can have no conception. If she were to try one, she would find her teeth in her way; modelling that action of her face, as she unconsciously modelled all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid age. Such is Judy.

  And her twin-brother couldn’t wind up a top for his life. He knows no more of Jack the Giant Killer, or of Sinbad the Sailor, than he knows of the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap-frog, or at cricket, as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much the better off than his sister, that on his narrow world of fact an opening has dawned, into such broader regions as lie within the ken of Mr. Guppy. Hence, his admiration and his emulation of that shining enchanter.

  Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron tea-trays on the table, and arranges cups and saucers. The bread she puts on in an iron basket; and the butter (and not much of it) in a small pewter plate. Grandfather Smallweed looks hard after the tea as it is served out, and asks Judy where the girl is?

  “Charley, do you mean?” says Judy.

  “Hey?” from Grandfather Smallweed.

  “Charley, do you mean?”

  This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed, who, chuckling, as usual, at the trivets, cries—“Over the water! Charley over the water, Charley over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley over the water, over the water to Charley!” and becomes quite energetic about it. Grandfather looks at the cushion, but has not sufficiently recovered his late exertion.

  “Ha!” he says when there is silence—“if that’s her name. She eats a deal. It would be better to allow her for her keep.”

  Judy, with her brother’s wink, shakes her head and purses up her mouth into No, without saying it.

  “No?” returns the old man. “Why not?”

  “She’d want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less,” says Judy.

  “Sure?”

  Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning, and calls, as she scrapes the butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste, and cuts it into slices, “You Charley, where are you?” Timidly obedient to the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with her hands covered with soap and water, and a scrubbing brush in one of them, appears and curtsies.

  “What work are you about now?” says Judy, making an ancient snap at her, like a very sharp old beldame.

  “I’m a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss,” replies Charley.

  “Mind you do it thoroughly, and don’t loiter. Shirking won’t do for me. Make haste! Go along!” cries Judy, with a stamp upon the ground. “You girls are more trouble than you’re worth, by half.”

  On this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother, looking in at the window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens the street door.

  “Ay, ay, Bart!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “Here you are, hey?”

  “Here I am,” says Bart.

  “Been along with your friend again, Bart?”

  Small nods.

  “Dining at his expense, Bart?”

  Small nods again.

  “That’s right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take warning by his foolish example. That’s the use of such a friend. The only use you can put him to,” says the venerable sage.

  His grandson, without receiving his good counsel as dutifully as he might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a slight wink and a nod, and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four old faces then hover over teacups, like a company of ghastly cherubim; Mrs. Smallweed perpetually twitching her head and chattering at the trivets and Mr. Smallweed requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a large black draught.

  “Yes, yes,” says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of wisdom. “That’s such advice as your father would have given you, Bart. You never saw your father. More’s the pity. He was my true son.” Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was particularly pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear.

  “He was my true son,” repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread and butter on his knee; “a good accountant, and died fifteen years ago.”

  Mrs. Smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with “Fifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box, fifteen hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hid!” Her worthy husband, setting aside his bread-and-butter, immediately discharges the cushion at her, crushes her against the side of her chair, and falls back in his own, overpowered. His appearance, after visiting Mrs. Smallweed with one of these admonitions, is particularly impressive and not wholly prepossessing; firstly, because the exertion generally twists his black skull-cap over one eye and gives him an air of goblin rakishness; secondly, because he mutters violent imprecations against Mrs. Smallweed; and thirdly, because the contrast between those powerful expressions and his powerless figure is suggestive of a baleful old malignant, who would be very wicked if he could. All this, however, is so common in the Smallweed family circle, that it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely shaken, and has his internal feathers beaten up; the cushion is restored to its usual place beside him; and the old lady, perhaps with her cap adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again, ready to be bowled down like a ninepin.

  Some time elapses, in the pre
sent instance, before the old gentleman is sufficiently cool to resume his discourse; and even then he mixes it up with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious partner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth but the trivets. As thus:

  “If your father, Bart, had lived longer, he might have been worth a deal of money—you brimstone chatterer!—but just as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been making the foundations for, through many a year—you jade of a magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean!—he took ill and died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of business care—I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of yourself!—and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip, just dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born—You are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig. You’re a head of swine!”

  Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of cups and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot, for the little charwoman’s evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence.

  “But, your father and me were partners, Bart,” says the old gentleman; “and when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there is. It’s rare for you both, that you went out early in life—Judy to the flower business, and you to the law. You won’t want to spend it. You’ll get your living without it, and put more to it. When I am gone, Judy will go back to the flower business, and you’ll still stick to the law.”

  One might infer, from Judy’s appearance, that her business rather lay with the thorns than the flowers; but she has in her time been apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her brother’s, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone, some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some resentful opinion that it is time he went.

  “Now, if everybody has done,” says Judy, completing her preparations, “I’ll have that girl in to her tea. She would never leave off, if she took it by herself in the kitchen.”

  Charley is accordingly introduced, and, under a heavy fire of eyes, sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter. In the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed appears to attain a perfectly geological age, and to date from the remotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful; evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving, seldom reached by the oldest practitioners.

  “Now, don’t stare about you all the afternoon,” cries Judy, shaking her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, “but take your victuals and get back to your work.”

  “Yes, miss,” says Charley.

  “Don’t say yes,” returns Miss Smallweed, “for I know what you girls are. Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe you.”

  Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission, and so disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not to gormandize, which “in you girls,” she observes, is disgusting. Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the general subject of girls, but for a knock at the door.

  “See who it is, and don’t chew when you open it!” cries Judy.

  The object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss Smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the bread and butter together, and launching two or three dirty teacups into the ebb-tide of the basin of tea; as a hint that she considers the eating and drinking terminated.

  “Now! Who is it, and what’s wanted?” says the snappish Judy.

  It is one “Mr. George,” it appears. Without other announcement or ceremony, Mr. George walks in.

  “Whew!” says Mr. George. “You are hot here. Always a fire, eh? Well! Perhaps you do right to get used to one.” Mr. George makes the latter remark to himself, as he nods to Grandfather Smallweed.

  “Ho! It’s you!” cries the old gentleman. “How de do? How de do?”

  “Middling,” replies Mr. George, taking a chair. “Your granddaughter I have had the honour of seeing before; my service to you, miss.”

  “This is my grandson,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “You ha’n’t seen him before. He is in the law, and not much at home.”

  “My service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like his sister. He is devilish like his sister,” says Mr. George, laying a great and not altogether complimentary stress on his last adjective.

  “And how does the world use you, Mr. George?” Grandfather Smallweed inquires, slowly rubbing his legs.

  “Pretty much as usual. Like a football.”

  He is a swarthy brown man of fifty; well made, and good looking; with crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to a pretty rough life. What is curious about him, is that he sits forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside. His step too is measured and heavy, and would go well with a weighty clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his mouth is set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his broad brown hand upon it, is to the same effect. Altogether, one might guess Mr. George to have been a trooper once upon a time.

  A special contrast Mr. George makes to the Smallweed family. Trooper was never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him. It is a broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure, and their stunted forms; his large manner, filling any amount of room, and their little narrow pinched ways; his sounding voice, and their sharp spare tones; are in the strongest and the strangest opposition. As he sits in the middle of the grim parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands upon his thighs and his elbows squared, he looks as though, if he remained there long, he would absorb into himself the whole family and the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-kitchen and all.

  “Do you rub your legs to rub life into ’em?” he asks of Grandfather Smallweed, after looking round the room.

  “Why, it’s partly a habit, Mr. George, and—yes—it partly helps the circulation,” he replies.

  “The cir-cu-la-tion!” repeats Mr. George, folding his arms upon his chest, and seeming to become two sizes larger. “Not much of that, I should think.”

  “Truly I’m old, Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “But I can carry my years. I’m older than her,” nodding at his wife, “and see what she is?—You’re a brimstone chatterer!” with a sudden revival of his late hostility.

  “Unlucky old soul!” says Mr. George, turning his head in that direction. “Don’t scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her poor cap half off her head, and her poor hair all in a muddle. Hold up, ma’am. That’s better. There we are! Think of your mother, Mr. Smallweed,” says Mr. George, coming back to his seat from assisting her, “if your wife an’t enough.”

  “I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr. George?” the old man hints, with a leer.

  The colour of Mr. George’s face rather deepens, as he replies: “Why no. I wasn’t.”

  “I am astonished at it.”

  “So am I. I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to have been one. But I wasn’t. I was a thundering bad son, that’s the long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody.”

  “Surprising!” cries the old man.

  “However,” Mr. George resumes, “the less said about it, the better now. Come! You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two months’ interest! (Bosh! It’s all correct. You needn’t be afraid to order the pipe. Here’s the new bill, and here’s the
two months’ interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it together in my business.)”

  Mr. George sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the parlour while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy to two black leathern cases out of a locked bureau; in one of which he secures the document he has just received and from the other takes another similar document which he hands to Mr. George, who twists it up for a pipe-light. As the old man inspects, through his glasses, every up-stroke and down-stroke of both documents, before he releases them from their leathern prison; and as he counts the money three times over, and requires Judy to say every word she utters at least twice, and is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is possible to be; this business is a long time in progress. When it is quite concluded, and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and fingers from it, and answers Mr. George’s last remark by saying, “Afraid to order the pipe? We are not so mercenary as that, sir. Judy, see directly to the pipe and the glass of cold brandy-and-water for Mr. George.”

  The sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all this time, except when they have been engrossed by the black leathern cases, retire together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but leaving him to the old man, as two young cubs might leave a traveller to the parental bear.

  “And there you sit, I suppose, all day long, eh?” says Mr. George, with folded arms.

  “Just so, just so,” the old man nods.

  “And don’t you occupy yourself at all?”

  “I watch the fire—and the boiling and the roasting—”

  “When there is any,” says Mr. George, with great expression.

  “Just so. When there is any.”

  “Don’t you read, or get read to?”